Citizens’ Council: a new forest and a climate mayor please
On behalf of the city council, one hundred Amsterdammers, selected by lottery, discussed new climate policy. Monday evening they presented 26 proposals to alderman Marieke van Doorninck (Sustainability), including the plan for a new building ‘the size of the current Amsterdamse Bos’, but on the west side of the city.
Another proposal is a fund filled by the municipality to make insulation affordable. A ‘climate mayor’ elected by the municipal council must act as an ambassador for climate policy. This includes someone like TV presenter Floortje Dessing.
democratic experiment
The city council decides to consult the citizens because Amsterdam is lagging far behind its climate targets of 55 percent less greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Van Doorninck promised to have made all their proposals beforehand. is the last word of the city council.
It provided suggestions on. For example, making 25 percent green with new building permits mandatory. From: An additional city tax of 25 euros per night for people who came by plane, and 3 euros for train passengers.
geothermal heat
Many other proposals from the citizens’ council have already been discussed in the municipal council on several occasions. For example, the proposal to quickly install more heat networks, preferably in combination with more geothermal energy, sustainable heating from the subsurface. The citizens’ deliberation also advocates measures that make public transport more attractive and the car more expensive, via other means of parking permits.
They are not shocking plans, but with a more obligatory character and with more haste. If a fund filled by the municipality pays for the investments, the Citizens’ Council believes that sustainability can be made mandatory – for housing associations to start with, but also for home owners and companies.
Another fund, to help homes with a hybrid heat pump or a heat network, may be funded by the citizens’ deliberation from an increase in the property tax OZB from a new energy tax.
The Berenschot consultancy has calculated all the measures and has managed to make up for almost half of the backlog of the climate targets, about 7. Chairman of the citizens’ council Alex Brenn, former Ombudsman, proud that the Amsterdammers have saved up a lot of free time. As a democratic experiment, the citizens’ deliberation can be repeated according to his taste.
Windmills
The hope was that the citizens’ deliberations could create more support for climate policy. Plans to build 17 windmills along the city’s fringe have been completed over the past year to a storm of protest. This also affected the citizens’ deliberations, because the proposal to build three additional wind turbines was only approved by 60 percent of the participants. This proposal did not make it, because it needed the support of three quarters.
The hundred Amsterdammers have prepared theirs drawn up by experts within two weeks. That is very short, beautiful Brenninkmeijer. While acting pressured to act quickly.
There is also the question of how representative the citizens’ deliberations were. The participants were, of course, selected by drawing lots among all Amsterdammers, but by no means everyone accepted the invitation. “The mix could have been more diverse,” he says. “You can’t say that a photo of the civil deliberation is one-on-one with a cross-section of the population of Amsterdam.”
Several participants also dropped out because it was an intensive week. That too is a lesson for the next citizens’ meeting, says Brenninkmeijer. “If you want to finish with a hundred participants, you have to start with 110.” Researchers at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences hope to draw more of this type of reduction from an extensive evaluation.