In October 2022, Ireland held its first Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, which ran in parallel to a national citizens' assembly taking place with the adult population. Designed with 9 Young Advisors aged 8-16, the Assembly brought together 35 randomly selected Members aged 7-17 from across Ireland to explore, discuss and create calls to action on how to protect and restore biodiversity in Ireland. The Assembly concluded with its members creating a vision statement, six key messages and 58 calls to action, published in a report, film and poster. These were presented to Minister Malcolm Noonan T.D., the former government minister (now senator) responsible for biodiversity in Ireland who commissioned the Assembly.
Over the last two years, the project consortium at Dublin City University and University College Cork (who designed and facilitated the Assembly) has conducted an impact evaluation on the Children and Young People’s Assembly's process and outcomes. This month, an impact report was published about the Assembly, highlighting the wide-ranging impacts of the Assembly on individual participants, families and communities, societal awareness and education, policy and practice development, institutions (including local and national government), and parliamentary processes.
This report was created with some of the Assembly members and Young Advisers, and was developed using the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies impact evaluation framework.
The team also created a version of the Irish Government's response to the Assembly's recommendations (published last year) for children and young people, available here.
It has been shared with all the children and young people involved so they can hear back about the impact the Assembly has had since 2022.
The research findings are also discussed in a series of academic publications, the first published earlier this month in the Journal of European Integration.
“There have been so many impacts on so many levels but I feel the biggest impact is having children’s voices listened to and not made into something that is trivialised. It has been so different to have our voices listened to on a level where I feel that you can look at something and see that is exactly what we did and this is the change that we have made.” Assembly member, Children and Young People's Assembly on Biodiversity Loss - Ireland
Find out more about the Assembly at www.cypbiodiversity.ie.
