WWViews is a project launched by Danish Board of Technology and Danish Cultural Institute, and its main objectives are to give a broad sample of citizens from across the world the opportunity to define and convey their positions on issues central to the negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, and to influence the COP15 negotiations and thereby the future of global climate policy.

The most significant activity of WWViews was to arrange and implement 44 simultaneous-and-worldwide meetings in 38 countries all over the world on September 26th, 2009. For each of the meetings, 100 people were randomly assembled and divided into 18 groups. Every group discussed climate change, based on the same materials, and finally made one suggestion to the representatives who would participate in COP15. After the process, one of the 18 suggestions every group made was selected by polling as the suggestion of the whole meeting.

The WWViews in Japan meeting was implemented at Miyako-messe by the Center for the Study of Communication-Design (CSCD) of Osaka University. The result of the meeting can be seen on the Internet if you are interested in.

Alike WWViews in Japan, WWViews in Osaka assembled the participants and held a meeting on climate change, based on the same materials and methods, but unlike WWViews in Japan, the WWViews in Osaka meeting was organized all by undergraduate and graduate students.

In everyday life, we have little chance to meet different people and to exchange different viewpoints about climate change with them. For this reason, the experience of engaging in WWViews in Osaka impressed all the participants there including me. Recently, some people have been arguing for the importance and necessity of citizen participation in various fields and problems. In Japan, the citizens’ jury system is one of the examples. From this experience, I learned the importance of continuously asking questions as to what citizen participation is for.

Reported by Sho Sekiya.