Social Justice and Environmental Awareness Developed through a Citizens’ Jury

Abstract:

A Citizens’ Jury (CJ) is a discussion forum in which managers, policymakers or politicians are able to present their case to the general public (‘citizens’) to whom they are accountable, and for these citizens to critically ask questions of the managers/policymakers/politicians in order to better understand issues surrounding local development, planning and policy, impacts and adaptive measures, and to highlight their concerns. A CJ can be useful with respect to developing social justice and environmental awareness issues because it can empower community action and present different viewpoints. A practical CJ exercise is used in a second-year undergraduate course entitled Climate Change and Society, at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The CJ is used to consider some of the impacts of management policies used for climate change and sustainable development adaption, based on a hypothetical scenario. This scenario is that a major energy company wants to build a dam with hydroelectric power station in a developing country. This will provide low-carbon renewable energy to the country, investment in electricity infrastructure, and the company is committed to help economic development in the country, including in jobs and education. However, building and flooding of the dam will involve displacing 10,000 people from rural communities, flooding agricultural areas and areas of high biodiversity, and archaeological sites. The exercise is based on students, in groups, assuming different ‘identities’ which may include a local business person, resident, politician, member of an NGO, tourist, engineer, farmer etc, from which viewpoint they must argue for/against the proposal and to question other peoples' viewpoints. This exercise is useful because it allows students to develop understandings of different viewpoints, evaluate risk and impacts on different communities, and highlights the complexity of real-world decision-making.