World Wide Views on Biodiversity:
Citizens in 25 Countries Send Advice to UN
Loka, as a national partner for the World Wide Views citizen consultation process, helped to organize and convene U.S. participants for World Wide Views on Biodiversity in September, 2012.
About 3,000 people from 25 countries around the world took part in locally organized deliberations on the policies and action needed to protect biodiversity. At each site, a demographically diverse group of about 100 citizens gathered to review background materials, discuss an identical set of questions, and then vote their recommendations to the world's policymakers. Over all, citizens around the world voiced strong support for further political action to stop the decline of biodiversity.
(Photo by WWV on Biodiversity Bolivia)
Some participants from the Highlands of Bolivia traveled for days to take part in Bolivia's WWV.
The policy report compiling the global results, World Wide Views on Biodiversity: From the World's Citizens to the Biodiversity Policymakers, was co-authored by Rick Worthington, Loka's chair. Rick helped present the report to the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity at the U.N.’s Eleventh Council of Parties for biodiversity – COP 11 – in Hyderabad, India, in October. Learn more.
World Wide Views is an example of the social and political innovation that Loka promotes to broaden public participation in science and technology policymaking, toward a more democratic politics for technology.
World Wide Views on Global Warming participants deliberating at the Boston Museum of Science in 2009
World Wide Views on Global Warming:
Loka in first-ever global policy consultation
Loka was a partner with the Danish Board of Technology and national partners in 38 countries in conducting deliberations by ordinary citizens on the policy issues to be addressed at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December, 2009. Briefing materials for U.S. delegates and policy-makers; global policy report, documentary, and extensive results are at the World Wide Views website.