Democratic Innovations for the Age of Climate Change

The 2024 Arne Næss symposium features David Van Reybrouck, one of the most exciting Belgian historians, writers and climate activists. Van Reybrouck is an internationally acclaimed author of Congo: The Epic History of a People, which won 19 prizes and has been translated into a dozen languages. More importantly, he is a pioneering of advocate of participatory democracy which is redesigned to combat the climate crisis. He founded the G1000 Citizens' Summit, and his work has led to trials in participatory democracy throughout the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The aim of the Symposium is to use Van Reybrouck's experiments as a starting point for a discussion of steps to ecological democracy with Norwegian students, academics, NGOs, political actors and general public. It is a truism that renewing democracy in a more ecological direction is critical to reaching climate goals. That said - despite sustainability being the stated goal of political leaders - democratic institutions and arrangements are rarely compatible with the imperative of profound socio-political transformation in the age of Anthropocene. We need to think about democratic innovations - involving not only politicians and industry but citizens at large - to forge an ecological democracy 2.0. David Van Reybrouck - with his impressive portfolio as an initiator of such innovations - is an expert on mobilizing citizen r in the process of forging a more ecological democracy. Apart from the Arne Næss lecture, the symposium will include panel of academics, representatives of Norwegian industry, researchers and politicians. The AN professor, David Van Reybrouck, will spend a week in Norway, giving extra inter-faculty lectures at research institutions, meet students, political actors and NGOs. The NFR's funds - if granted - will cover his travel, expenses, honorarium, five days' accommodation in Oslo, and the cost of administrative help in organizing the Symposium.