From Talk to Transformation: How Climate Assemblies Are Changing Minds — and Policy

​A new analysis from SFU's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue examines the real-world impacts of climate deliberation processes, drawing on case studies from the UK, Canada, and France to challenge the view that citizen assemblies produce little tangible change. The evidence reviewed shows that deliberative processes consistently transform participants — increasing climate literacy, shifting behavior, and in some cases inspiring civic leadership — while also enabling policy consensus across deep value disagreements. Notably, more than 70% of France's Citizens' Convention for Climate recommendations were adopted in some form, including landmark climate legislation. For NCDD's network, the analysis reinforces a core deliberative principle: that well-designed processes can move people from passivity or division toward informed, collective action — even on some of the most contested issues of our time.

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A new analysis from the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University examines how climate deliberation processes have generated measurable impacts on both participants and public policy, pushing back against narratives that dismiss citizen assemblies as ineffective. Authored by Senior Analyst Claire Adams, the piece surveys several prominent deliberative climate processes — including Climate Assembly UK, the Edmonton Citizen Panel on Climate Challenges, the Prairie Farmer & Rancher Forum, and France's Citizens' Convention for Climate — to build a case that deliberation does more than produce reports. It changes people. In Climate Assembly UK alone, 93% of participants reported learning significantly about climate pathways, nearly 90% felt more confident discussing climate issues, and 91% made at least one climate-friendly behavioral change following the process. One participant was moved to run for the local council.

Beyond personal transformation, the analysis highlights deliberation's capacity to generate policy consensus across deep disagreement. The Edmonton panel, designed explicitly to account for local fossil fuel economic dependence and higher rates of climate skepticism, framed discussions around energy choices and community resilience rather than global climate science. The result was the unanimous city council adoption of Edmonton's Energy Transition Strategy in 2015. Similarly, the Prairie Farmer & Rancher Forum brought together participants with sharply differing views on climate change and found that agreement on concrete agricultural recommendations was achievable even when underlying beliefs diverged. France's Citizens' Convention for Climate, often cited as a cautionary tale of limited implementation, is reframed here as a partial success: more than 70% of its recommendations were taken up in some form, including Europe's first ecocide legislation and a world-first prohibition on short-haul domestic flights where train alternatives exist.

Adams concludes that deliberative climate processes are not a cure-all, but their track record demonstrates genuine potential to build civic capacity, surface context-specific solutions, and open political space for more ambitious climate action than conventional policymaking typically allows. The SFU Centre for Dialogue positions itself as well-placed to advance this work, combining research expertise in community-centered climate innovation with practical experience designing and running deliberative processes. For the broader dialogue and deliberation field, the analysis offers a useful corrective to reductive assessments of climate assemblies, and a reminder that impact often operates at multiple levels simultaneously — personal, communal, and institutional.

Learn more: From deliberation to climate action at sfu.ca/dialogue/what-we-do/knowledge-practice/resources/from-deliberation-to-climate-action