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đź“Ť Global Governance Institute (Cours Saint-Michel 30, 1040 Bruxelles), Belgium
🗓️ 15 June 2023, 16:00-18:30
Level Up organised an event on 15th June 2023, contributing to the European Commission’s public consultation on the EU’s climate targets for 2040. This was carried out in collaboration with the European Climate Pact, its Ambassador Sevim Aktas, and the Global Governance Institute. The objective was to produce policy recommendations and create new opportunities for stakeholders to engage with the general public. In addition, the event helped to refine the Level Up Toolkit.Â
We invited 30 participants representing EU institutions (e.g. European Commission’s DG CLIMA, DG ENV, and DG ENER), international organisations (e.g. UNEP), social and climate NGOs (e.g. Migration Policy Group, European Federation for Intercultural Learning, The Good Lobby), businesses active in the environment, energy, or climate sectors, research centres (e.g. CEPS, Brussels School of Governance, Institute for European Environmental Policy), members of the general public and early career scholars. About 50% of the participants were invited by our team and the other 50% openly registered through our website event page.
Location
The Level Up pilot project in Brussels took place in the coworking spaces of the Global Governance Institute in Brussels. The hosting Institute provided us with a common space, as well as three separate breakout rooms, featuring whiteboards and screens.
Duration
The pilot project in Brussels lasted 2.5h, with additional, non-compulsory time allocated for informal networking over drinks in the nearby restaurant (at participants’ own expenses).
Topic & Outcome
The event was structured around the existing and, at the time ongoing, public consultation procedure to inform the DG CLIMA’s impact assessment and proposal of EU climate targets for 2040, under the requirements of the European Climate Law. Participants were invited to develop policy proposals that the European Commission should consider including among their upcoming recommendations for EU climate targets. Overall, the participants produced three policy proposals, addressing (1) transformations of long-haul heavy duty vehicle transport; (2) remodelling food systems while promoting social justice; and (3) increasing trust by fostering transparency, accountability, and public participation.
Community: Half of the participants for the event registered through an open, online invitation link, that was disseminated through Level Up website, social media, as well as European Climate Pact Ambassador Selim Aktas, and DG CLIMA’s social media and newsletter. The topics of discussion were preselected by the requirements of the ongoing public consultation process, but no limits were imposed on who could sign up.
Stakeholders: The invited stakeholders were chosen to represent the wide variety of relevant institutions, policy and topic experts, lobby and other interest groups. A very wide array of participants were invited in order to ultimately assure participation of 15 stakeholders, to ensure optimal engagement and connection between the different stakeholder groups and elaboration of feasible and detailed policy proposals. The participants were invited personally over email, using existing networks and snowballing techniques. All participants were given concept note about the proposal and further details during the email conversations.
All participants were sent pre-event surveys as part of their registration procedures for the event, as well as post-event surveys to measure the changes in the participants perceptions.
The registration process for the event included Safer Space Guidelines, that participants were encouraged to familiarise themselves with before the event and they were also given handouts with the guidelines, when they arrived at the event location.
Level 1 consisted of introductory drinks and networking, presentations, and one game (Trankiftu).
Silo 2: Trankiftu. After the example of moderators, participants were directed into their smaller groups and encouraged to each share one thing (trait, item, subject – real or fictitious) that encapsulates their contribution to society and to their group work on that day.
The game was played according to the Toolkit instructions. Each team member was given a particular role and each team included at least one representative of European Commission’s DG. The groups had to pass 3 Levels, before they could present their proposals to everyone. The Levels included (1) deciding on the topic of proposal, (2) interim targets and actions of their proposal, (3) social justice issues. All three teams then presented their proposals in short presentations and engaged in short common Q&A session, before voting in the preferendum and announcing the winning proposal.
This level was shortened due to time constraints. Following the preferendum voting, and the announcement of the “winning” team, the participants engaged in some informal discussions both at the event location and the nearby restaurant. As part of this Level, the Level Up team members elaborated policy proposals and submitted them officially into the EU’s public consultation procedure, while also wrote up an event brief for the Global Governance Institute.
After the project, we conducted a feedback assessment with the students by using the online tool ‘Google Forms’ (see Feedback Form Sample, below). The following slides show the feedback from the participants. The numbers of the answers correspond with attitudes, going from completely disagree or a low score (0) to completely agree or a high score (10).
