Resumen de Student citizens’ assemblies, politics, sustainability and socio-ecological practices
Emilie Frenkiel, Olivier Michel
More students now express eco-anxiety and frustration about outdated teachings and jobs supporting neoliberal practices contributing to overrunning planetary boundaries. Individual teachers and researchers have experimented and transposed climate citizens’ assemblies into the classroom with the purpose of updating courses for the Anthropocene, making students reflect on the urgent need to transform and make campus compatible with the Paris agreements, the relevance of deliberative practices for democratic life and attempting to represent future generations. The student citizens’ assembly (SCA) at Paris Est Créteil University (UPEC) is an experimental deliberative process that aims to involve students and give them a voice on the complex issue of transitioning to sustainability. This yearly transposition of the French Climate Citizens’ Assembly in academic settings compels 450 students from different fields and levels to get multi-faceted training, deliberate and produce recommendations for living in a more ecological and inclusive society at the level of the university (42,000 students) and beyond.
Students are participating up to 100 hours to reflect, problematize, raise awareness and act on our environmental impact through making concrete proposals for action but also through writing and playing forum theatre scenes during the process. Each year, the SCA delves on a specific topic. The variety of approached topics and the thematic overlaps that incessantly emerge help students become aware of the systemic dimension of the ecological crisis and the need for ecologically embedded (Whiteman and Cooper, 2000) political actions. This paper written by academics who have organized the SCA for three years investigates how the process intends to re-politicize climate change and sustainability through making visible and inclusive the decision-making process and empowering students to create, adopt and propagate socio-ecological practices.
