Scott Herrett on discovering the deep potential of deliberation
Deliberation is the long and careful consideration of a subject.
In this house nothing is there by chance: it is always the result of great deliberation. Collins Dictionary
Have you heard of the 'deliberative wave' sweeping around the globe? This describes the increased interest and practice in forms of deliberative democracy to take on politically difficult issues, such as the climate and ecological crisis, abortion and gay marriage.
The Scotland’s Climate Citizen Assembly has just finished its 6th weekend. I’ve been observing the assembly sessions where over one hundred ordinary people from around Scotland have been meeting to hear evidence, deliberate and come up with recommendations on ‘how should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way?’. This blog is about why I believe we need more deliberative forums at every level in society because the traditional ways of making decisions on a local, national or global scale are no longer fit for purpose.
“Today, we use about 100 million barrels of oil every single day, there are no politics to change that”. Greta Thunberg
The grave risks of burning fossil fuels and biodiversity collapse have been known about for generations, but emissions continue to rise and forests and indigenous lands continue to be destroyed. ‘It’s the system!’ I hear people say, but how do we change the system? We could start by reflecting on the actual way we made the political decisions that lead on to the clearance of forests or support the continued exploration of fossil fuels, even though we all know that oil cannot be burnt.
I believe group deliberation offers the basis to transform society. My perspective partly comes from my experience of how I and many others have experienced deliberative spaces in automatous social movements like Extinction Rebellion Scotland. But my interest in deliberation was sparked during a dark January night in 2015, by an unlikely encounter with a group of club anglers near Edinburgh
Back then, I was studying for a master’s degree, looking at the ways in which people and society value nature. I was working with fellow students on a group assignment to choose a local ecosystem to carry out a ’socio-ecological assessment’. The aim was to understand how and why members of a local angling club visit the River Almond which flows out into Forth. It’s logical to assume the main reason was to catch fish. Surprisingly that was not necessarily the case.
Six anglers attended our focus group one night in the club house. They were all white men, aged early 30’s to late 60’s, who regularly spent time along the river. Our first exercise was to invite them to respond individually by listing their top 3 reasons why they value the river. Unsurprisingly the most popular among the group was to catch fish, the next was for the nature and wildlife and the 3rd most common reason was for the peace and quiet and the sense of escape this gave from daily life.
‘yeah you’re right, I’ve never really thought of it like that, but you’re right’,
After the individual exercise, we asked them to deliberate through group discussion, and choose collectively the top 3 reasons why they value the river. This is when I first witnessed the transformative potential of group deliberation. What followed was a rich and revelatory discussion on why they regularly go to the river almond. Maybe it was the first time they’ve ever been involved in a discussion of this kind. I don’t know that for sure, but what I witnessed was a group of men, who appeared to have had preconceived opinions of why they valued the river (and by extension nature) gain a richer insight and come to some other understanding about themselves and how they relate to the world. Comments filled the room like, ‘yeah you’re right, I’ve never really thought of it like that, but you’re right’, while laughing.
The deliberation ended and they had agreed a list of the top 3 reasons why they value the river. These were:
1. Peace and quiet and the sense of escape.
2. Wildlife and nature
3. To catch fish
This was summed up perfectly with one of them laughing – “Aye, if it was just all about catching fish, then I would just go angling in my bathtub”
At the start of the meeting, I sensed the men were slightly suspicious of us and our questions, but by the end they were full of gratitude. One of them explained he had “never experienced anything like that before, and it felt good, really good”.
Ok, we facilitated a convivial experience amongst a group fishermen, But so what? Why does this matter? I think it matters for so many reasons. It highlights in a small but compelling way the transformative nature of deliberative processes and how they enable a deeper understanding of one’s place in the world, a process which could lead to better decisions being made about the world people inhabit. This is not just an abstract notion; this has real world consequences. For example, at the time of the meeting, the anglers were concerned about plans for a new housing estate further upstream.
I don’t actually know what happened, but let’s assume the housing developer wanted to show the council they had consulted the local community and designed the development to allay local concerns, especially with those who visit and use the river. One of the easiest and most common forms of consultation are to carry surveys/questionaries with individual people. So, in this case, one of the most obvious questions to ask would be ‘why do you value the river?’
If going by our responses of asking that question with individual anglers, the developer may have focused the design to not adversely affect the river’s fish population. If they were really conscientious, they may have offered to increase the fish population or compensate river users, rather than focusing their design to maintain the peace and quiet or the river’s aesthetics. This is all hypothetical, but it does show that a developer, or indeed a planning committee with the best intentions, can be blinkered to the deeper and fundamental needs of people by the methods and processes that are used to consult and make decisions. Eliciting values at an individual level is still useful, but I would argue values or decisions gained through group deliberation carry additional wisdom, especially for societal issues, such as the climate crisis.
Deliberating with a group, provides a means to recognise that who we are and how we value the world around us, is made out of our constantly shifting relation to other people and other things. So, it makes sense to include other people and other things in our own sense making.
We are not islands, or – if we are – we can be as connected by the water between us as we are separated by it, if we’re in a space that encourages us to pay attention.
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Going back to the Scotland’s Climate Assembly, it is still far from certain how effective it will actually be in addressing such deep rooted, systemic issues like the climate crisis. Just before the first weekend, two members of Extinction Rebellion Scotland who were on the stewarding group left, citing that the assembly was being constrained by a ‘don’t rock the boat’ attitude, and thus by design it would be unable to fully address the deeper systemic causes of the climate crisis.
You can hear more about that story and more about deliberation in Scotland in this podcast I created for Grassroots2Global. As well as hearing about the climate assembly we also explore the potential of how People and Citizen Assemblies could reinvigorate democracy in Scotland and around the world.