Between the backstage and the frontstage of climate assemblies: facilitation revisited

The Global Assembly (GA), a participatory process led by civil society organizations and implemented in the framework of COP26, engaged 100 people from all over the world to deliberate a global response to the global climate crisis. This process responded to the limits of applying dominant deliberative features in the at a global scale through multiple design tweaks in the backstage of deliberative praxis. For instance, adjusting the design of online deliberation, addressing translation issues, and the randomized selection of geographical locations based on population density are all relevant forthe scripted ‘phase zero’ of collaborative action. In doing so, the frontstage of deliberation within the Global Assembly faced new challenges that raised the need to revise the role of facilitators within deliberative forums. Based on the analysis of 16 in-depth interviews with facilitators and organizers of the GA, as well as audiovisual and survey data from deliberations and participants, we aim to understand how the role of facilitators is enacted within climate assemblies? And how facilitation enabled deliberation during the Global Assembly? The paper is divided into three parts. First, building upon literature on co-design and facilitation practices as well as global deliberation, we lay the foundation for our understanding of deliberation and how it is enabled. Second, we discuss the enablers and barriers of facilitation within the Global Assembly as we analyze the backstage and frontstage of facilitation in deliberative practice. Finally, by critically accompanying and evaluating how facilitators navigated the GA, we contribute to the understanding of the role of facilitation in deliberative forums and suggest certain revisions when conceiving of facilitation at the global scale.