Global facilitation revisited: The many stages of climate assemblies

Climate assemblies are gaining attention as a means to respond to the climate crisis democratically. While much research has focused on the design and outcomes of mini-publics, the role of facilitators –especially outside Western contexts– remains underexplored. The Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis (GA), implemented during COP26, offers a unique case for examining facilitation in global deliberative forums. Designed to include 100 participants selected globally, the GA aimed to deliberate on how humanity can fairly and effectively address the climate crisis. Facilitators played a critical role in navigating the GA’s complexity, which required adapting to unforeseen challenges during its online, transnational deliberation. Far from merely implementing pre-designed scripts, facilitators improvised and redesigned processes in response to participants’ needs, shifting from their initial frontstage role to co-designers in the backstage. These adaptations revealed enablers and barriers to global deliberation, including the challenges of fostering collective learning, managing diverse perspectives, and ensuring inclusivity. This chapter highlights the importance of including facilitators in process design from the outset and reframing their role as reflective practitioners, based on 19 semi-structured interviews with facilitators of the GA. We argue that flexibility, shared ownership, and continuous collaboration are essential for enabling deliberation at global scale.