Global Citizens' Assembly for People and Planet
A comprehensive effort to engage citizens worldwide on the occasion of the 30th UN Climate Change Conference in November 2025 in Brazil, also referred to as COP30, was announced last month in New York.
This article first appeared on the Democracy Without Borders website.
Hosted by Iswe Foundation, the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group, and the New York Society for Ethical Culture, an event on September 23 marked the launch of a “Global Citizens’ Assembly for People and Planet” and a coalition of around 40 organizations who are supporting the project. According to a press release issued by Iswe Foundation, the Brazilian government plans to place the assembly “at the heart of COP30”.
Platform for citizens globally
The assembly is intended to provide a platform for citizens globally to contribute their perspectives on climate challenges. The plan is to convene a global “core assembly” made up of 300 people “selected by civic lottery, demographically representative of the global population”. Furthermore, a “large number of smaller local deliberations” is to be facilitated through additional “community assemblies”.
“Anyone anywhere will be invited to run a community assembly”, the CEO of Iswe Foundation, Rich Wilson, stated. The intention is to reach “over ten million people” by 2030. The process thus is envisaged to extend beyond COP30 and the new coalition promotes making the Global Citizens’ Assembly a permanent body.
Hear what common people want
Brazil’s Vice Minister for Climate Change, Ana Toni, emphasized that the assembly was important to let political leaders hear what common people want in climate policy and to help “accelerate implementation”. Abdullah Mokssit, the Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which gathers the world’s scientific knowledge in the field, agreed and noted that the assembly can help ensure that climate research is acted on.
The initiative offers a new route for public engagement, aiming to bridge the gap between high-level climate negotiations and the grassroots voices often left out of these dialogues. Its goals include supporting community-led solutions at all levels and fostering civic responsibility and education, particularly in regions most impacted by climate crises.
First Global Assembly in 2021
In 2021, a first Global Citizens’ Assembly was organized by civil society alongside COP26 which was convened in Glasgow, UK. At the time, the UN’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that it was “a practical way of showing how we can accelerate action through solidarity and people power”.
The new effort according to Iswe Foundation benefits from an evaluation of the COP26-related assembly, the development of new digital infrastructure, coordinated global research, and ongoing engagement “with UN Member States, UN bodies, companies and businesses, and civil society organizations” since then.
Open letter
Ahead of the UN’s Summit of the Future on September 22-23, over 160 civil society organizations and networks from across the world released an open letter addressed to UN Member States, calling on them to implement “four priority measures” identified in the area of inclusive global governance. One of them was “a permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly which would give ordinary citizens, selected by civic lottery to be representative of the world’s population, a say on pressing global challenges.”
The open letter was initiated by Democracy Without Borders, Democracy International and Iswe Foundation. Other measures it highlighted were the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, a UN World Citizens’ Initiative and a UN Civil Society Envoy.
Popular demand for citizen participation
A recent survey covering 22 countries suggests there is robust popular demand for “citizen participation in global governance”, in particular through citizens’ assemblies and a Parliamentary Assembly.