For example, youth living in a given area could team up with the elders and start a conversation about the most important issues at the local level. - NSTP/ASYRAF HAMZAH
For example, youth living in a given area could team up with the elders and start a conversation about the most important issues at the local level. - NSTP/ASYRAF HAMZAH

ONE key issue related to climate change and sustainable development is how average people can be consulted and engaged, setting up the conditions for a truly bottom-up approach to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Around the world, since the pandemic, there has been a flurry of activism among mayors and local government policymakers, all trying to come up with innovative solutions to make urban centres more livable and sustainable.

Many networks have been created globally, including platforms to exchange ideas and propose innovative solutions that could influence the national level policymakers, the key decision-makers in central governments.

Examples include more pedestrian areas limiting the impact of cars in urban centres, better public transportation and groundbreaking work in the use of more efficient energies.

Unfortunately, these are still groundbreaking exercises. Contributions from lower and localised levels, with involved citizens, should be the standard.

We still need to think about new cost-effective and doable exercises of public consultations that could, at a later stage, turn into deliberative and decision-making forums according to the local context.

In Malaysia, citizens may take a stand now and come forward with propositions and ideas.

Ireland has been pioneering with conducting citizens' assemblies at the national level, but they proved to be too cumbersome, resource-intensive and extremely time-consuming.

Moreover, the national government there has been fully backing the different experimentations from 2012 where the members of the first citizens' assembly debated changes to the constitution.

Can't we imagine, instead, less complex and more bottom-up ideas starting from the kampung and neighbourhoods in Malaysia? For example, youth living in a given area could team up with the elders and start a conversation about the most important issues at the local level.

That could represent an important first step. Do you need a budget or resources to carry out something like this?

I am not discounting that such conversations are happening already, but how engaged are the youth? And how much do they feed higher levels of decision making?

This combination of local wisdom and expertise with new ideas could become a propeller leading to innovative solutions. Universities and local schools could facilitate such debates and discussions.

Maybe we could have think tanks, non-governmental organisations and universities forging a common front and try these conversations out in different parts of Malaysia.

Academicians with economic, science, sociology, social work and political science backgrounds could mentor students and local youth alike on how to conduct such discussions and provide facts-based evidence in the conversations.

Perhaps it is too late to influence the 12th Development Plan, but given also the ongoing political crisis, a delay in its release could be an opportunity to test the validity of some of the assumptions at its foundations.

Imagine if members of the parliament at federal and state levels, in partnership with their counterparts in the opposition and together with senior civil officers, would jointly participate in these exercises not to provide their own thinking, but just to listen to the concerns and ideas of the people.

These could become pillars of a new form of bottom-up and participatory democracy, something extremely important in the context of Malaysia.

Marcin Gerwin, a specialist in sustainable development and a leading expert on participatory democracy, in his book Citizens' Assemblies: Guide to Democracy That Works, available for free on Internet, offers an interesting template on how to create successful citizens' assemblies.

To start, considering the Malaysian political environment, a better idea would be to call these experimentations "Talk the Problems, Fix the Problems" forums and keep them simple.

Momentum can be created and few gatherings could become many with a wider scope and greater ambition through "Fix the Future" local forums, but most importantly, start in the easiest and most practical way.

The author is the co-founder of ENGAGE and writes on social inclusion, youth development, regional integration and SDGs in the context of Asia Pacific