Interview with Lars Klüver, Director of the Danish Board of Technology

Lars Klüver is Director of Teknologiraadet – The Danish Board of Technology (DBT) - the Danish parliamentary office of technology assessment. He has 20 years of experience in technology assessment and policy analysis research. His work at the DBT ranges from stakeholder and citizen engagement to political advisory processes. Here he discusses the first attempt to engage citizens around the world in dialogue about a science and society issue, climate change.

In September 2009 you coordinated the World Wide Views on Climate Change (WWViews) global citizens’ conference; what inspired this project?

The WWViews project is part of a long term development in technology assessment and also, in parallel, in citizen participation. What we have been seeing as part of the globalisation process is that science and technology policy is moving upwards; it is becoming less of a national, and more and more a transnational and a global issue. This is predominantly because of the development of markets – for example changes in intellectual property rights, and the development of the World Trade Organisation. Some of the issues around science and technology are connected to the market, and some are connected to the trans-border consequences, for example climate change. As a result, we have a lot of technological advances that are increasingly being regulated at transnational or even global level.

Consequently, a lot of political discussions go on at the global level. This is important and should happen, because if the issue’s spread is trans-border it should ultimately be solved trans-border. However, from a democratic and also from a policy advisory point of view it is problematic that we do not have functions that follow up on that level. We do not have a transnational technology assessment; we do not have transnational debate. So, there is a challenge for organisations like us, and there is a challenge for society. That challenge is also about public participation as part of the advice. There is also a democratic vacuum because you can’t find the transnational public, or the transnational dialogue. This is a problem in many ways. It is a problem for policy-making in itself, because if there is a vacuum in debate, then there will, in the longer run, also be a vacuum of trust. Climate change is one of those very obvious areas where we need to do global policy-making, but we do not have a global dialogue.

In what ways did you use WWViews to impact on policy?

In many of the participating countries very good communications were made to national governments and the COP15 delegations; for example, in some countries the WWViews policy recommendation reports were given directly to the Prime Minister. However, in other countries communication to policy makers was very weak, and so we have a very varied picture, but those countries that peaked; they had really remarkable media coverage. At COP15 we had a very strong side event that took place very close to the negotiations. Everybody going in and out from the negotiations walked by our side event and so we had reasonable coverage.

An interesting point about the impact of WWViews is that whenever we have been talking to a politician you can tell that they see something in this project. I have a feeling that the reason for this is that there is a lot of political meaning in the project. I will explain this further. It was obvious at COP 15 that there were two rooms: one was inside the negotiation room, then, the other was outside on the streets in Copenhagen, in the exhibition area of COP15 where scientists, NGOs, industry, lobbyists and so on were holding discussion and debate. The interesting thing about WWViews is that it sympathised with a space that was somewhere in between these two groups, it could build a bridge between those inside and those outside the room. Through WWViews we can build bridges on a global level, and I think that was an important thing here, and something that will impact on policy in the long term.

How successful was the WWViews project? Were there any particularly interesting outcomes for the project?

In terms of the distribution of the method and capacity building, for example in some countries this worked very well. Some countries are now implementing other participatory practices, so the project has been broken some ice and covered new ground. In addition, a figure from one of the evaluation projects says that up to 25% of the media, NGOs, politicians they interviewed at COP15 knew something about WWViews. This figure is very high with regards to the relative size of the WWViews project in comparison to the vast COP15 process. So I think we should be satisfied with the communications made to the delegates.

Another thing that is worth thinking about is whether the WWViews process was reflected in the outcome of COP15. If you look at the results of WWViews and you look at the results of COP15, then it is a roaring no - no impact. But on the other hand it is difficult to say. COP15 ended up being a power game and projects like WWViews do not have anything to say in such a power game. My feeling is that if you are talking about a little project trying to get its voice heard, it is difficult, but I think we succeeded. I definitely think in some countries it has had a real impact.

With regard to the outcome of the project I think it was surprising that everybody around the world was so ready to move with regard to doing something about the climate situation – citizens appeared to be more mobile than the politicians. There are politically very different positions around the world, but those political positions were not really reflected in the decisions, or policy votes, of the citizens. This was interesting for policy makers because it seems that if you give people responsibility in the process, their decisions in turn become more responsible. This is often seen as an outcome of participatory processes like WWViews. There were some people who took part in the process who were real climate sceptics. However, over the course of the event they softened their views. Their scepticism did not hinder them in suggesting that something should be done about the ‘potential’ problem. When I talk to policy makers that is interesting to them, the fact that citizens are feeling liberated by this – they still have their personal environmentally sceptical persuasions, but they seem to take a ‘no regret’ decision when it comes to doing something about it. It is a kind of ‘insurance’ thinking that the citizen makes. The participatory exercise gives participants the possibility of some influence, this consequently gives them responsibility, and they act on that responsibility by suggesting fail safe policies even if they are not in line with their normal political standpoint, or their attitudes to the scientific evidence.

Could you explain in more detail how the participants contributed to the project? Was it an aim for the project to strengthen democratic capacities within the participants involved?

In general the participants were not the target group, they were responders to our process and the questions we put to them. They had a crucial role of informing us about what citizens think, it was not the aim of the project to inform them. Of course, in practice it goes both ways and we did end up with a citizen group that knew a lot about the issue. In some countries the project has developed some citizen ambassadors for this type of process, and that means something, but that wasn’t the main focus. The highest purpose was to extract the assessment of the citizen and bring that assessment to the delegates. I think that capacity building is an area where something important has taken place; in many of the participating countries capacity really has been built.

In any participatory project there is capacity building. For example in Denmark we have had participatory processes for many years. Even now when we are working with the municipalities and the regions, we meet new politicians and civil servants each time – hence new and more capacity building each time. I think that an important part of each participatory process is that they build up new ways of thinking about policy-making. For me, that is the important side of participation.

What lies in the future for this kind of global deliberation? And more specifically, for WWViews?

My feeling is that we will make WWViews again, and we are already developing one possible avenue. In terms of global participation there is a challenge to develop methodologies that can be implemented easier, faster and cheaper. The internet is definitely an area where we need to develop good participatory methods. Current methods are too arbitrary in the choice of the participants, or biased, and there is no way in ensuring the reasonable composition of the panels. There is no true dialogue; it is a written dialogue which is not a fair dialogue in most systems. I think that the challenge to develop participatory methods that can be used internationally will not be solved tomorrow, but it is an important consideration that requires ongoing research.

What also is interesting is that the WWViews methodology worked in all cultures. When we set out the original WWViews methodology the main concern raised by many people was that this will never work in so many countries with so many different cultures. But that wasn’t true; it really worked in all cultures. That is a very, very important experience, because for me that takes away lots of the barriers to participation.

What advice would you give others considering something similar?

There is a built in Catch-22 in these kinds of processes, and that is about centralisation or decentralisation. You have to have a methodology that puts up a common space that you have to set yourself inside in order to be able to make projects comparable. At the same time, inside that space there has to be some flexibility so that project managers can work more specifically with their local cultures and context. That is not an easy balance to find, however I think we hit that balance and that is exactly why WWViews had the success it did.