In conclusion, this chapter highlights the levers available to governments to further embed the principles and practices of open government throughout the entire policy cycle of environmental and climate action, and ensure that citizen participation in the green transition is integrated, effective and meaningful.
Open Government for the Green Transition
Panorama of Good Practices Towards Meaningful Citizen Participation
Abstract
This report serves as a compendium of recent and innovative good practices implemented across OECD member and partner countries, which have enabled meaningful citizen participation and enhanced the impact of public engagement in the context of the green transition. These practices – spanning different levels of government and stages of the public policy cycle – are intended to inspire other actors to implement similar initiatives, with the aim of truly involving citizens and enabling them to take ownership of the challenges and responses to the environmental and climate crisis. The report identifies levers for (re)engaging citizens in the green transition through the application of open government principles – transparency, accountability, citizen and stakeholder participation – through the analytical framework of the OECD’s three levels of participation: information, consultation, and engagement. As stated in the introduction and demonstrated throughout the report, these levels should not be viewed as a rigid hierarchy; meaningful and effective citizen participation requires the agile mobilisation of all three. To have a genuine impact on climate governance, these levels must be understood and deployed in a dynamic and integrated way (OECD, 2022[1]).
This section, which serves both as a conclusion and a forward-looking reflection, highlights opportunities to deepen the application of open government principles – particularly citizen participation – to enable individuals to take ownership of the response to the environmental and climate emergency and to become full-fledged actors in the process. It first underscores the value of approaching participatory practices, methodologies, and mechanisms in a more comprehensive and coordinated manner, in order to maximise their impact and foster greater public ownership. Secondly, it identifies avenues for strengthening the quality of citizen participation and embedding it more firmly as a governance tool, with the aim of ensuring effective and meaningful citizen participation – capable of driving a paradigm shift in environmental and climate governance.
The environmental crisis is a complex and multidimensional challenge. It is a “fundamental” issue that affects all citizens and carries deep, long-term implications for public policy (OECD, 2024[2]). This makes it a domain in which citizen participation is all the more essential, as the responses adopted will shape the trajectory of our societies as a whole. Climate change – along with related environmental issues such as resource depletion, pollution and its health impacts, the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity – represents a particularly relevant case for applying open government principles across a specific area of public policy, in order to pursue urgent objectives (OECD, 2024[2]).
While many citizen participation initiatives related to the green transition are being implemented – driven by a range of actors including national and local governments, civil society organisations, experts, and the academic or scientific community – and pursue a shared objective, few countries have adopted a truly integrated and holistic approach to citizen engagement throughout the entire policy cycle in response to the environmental crisis. Such an approach would amplify the impact of otherwise isolated initiatives and enable outreach to citizens at multiple levels and through diverse forms of action.
5.1.1. Considering citizen engagement throughout the public policy cycle
Adopting an integrated approach to open government practices – information, communication, and participation – aligned with the public policy cycle can help strengthen the link between awareness, the intention to act, the design and implementation of ambitious climate policies, and direct citizen action through changes in behaviour and lifestyle (see Figure 5.1). Although efforts are often focused on the policy design stage, it is crucial to recognise the benefits and opportunities of engaging citizens at each of the five stages of the cycle – from priority setting to monitoring and evaluation.
Source: Designed by the author based on OECD (2022[1]), OECD Guidelines for CItizen Participation Processes, OECD Publishing.
Indeed, the roles of information, communication, and participation can vary and complement one another across each stage of the policy cycle. Chapter 2 of this report highlights how public communication can be strategically leveraged at different points in the cycle, as well as the objectives it can help achieve. While the initial level – information – has helped raise public awareness of the climate emergency through access to information laws, open data frameworks, and public communication, its potential to support climate transition goes far beyond awareness-raising alone. For example, local-level public communication can serve as a key tool for risk prevention and for helping the most vulnerable populations adapt to the direct consequences of climate change. At the same time, it is an essential lever for driving behavioural change aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also enables the assessment and strengthening of public acceptance of green policies by framing communication in ways that address citizens’ concerns, fears, and potential resistance across diverse communities.
Similarly, in the field of climate information, moving beyond a view of citizens as mere “recipients” of information and instead involving them in the production, dissemination, and translation of relevant data into accessible and reusable formats (see Chapter 2) can serve multiple objectives: (1) Enhancing awareness of the real and tangible impacts of climate change and pollution in daily life; (2) Encouraging the adoption of adaptive measures to mitigate environmental and health-related damage; (3) Bringing to light issues often overlooked by governments due to a lack of locally generated data; (4) Influencing the design of public policies and decision-making processes by raising bottom-up concerns. Moreover, the most advanced and innovative forms of engagement – such as deliberative assemblies – naturally include a strong component of information-sharing and capacity-building. Complementing these processes with broad and strategic public communication helps amplify their impact, extend their reach to the wider population, and stimulate broader societal debate.
Finally, regularly consulting stakeholders on existing public policies not only helps identify areas where regulations are failing to achieve their intended objectives or are producing unintended effects, but also establishes an crucial feedback loop to inform the development of new regulations (OECD, 2025[3]). In addition, it is essential to involve stakeholders at the stage of regulatory implementation – for instance, during the design of major permitting and authorisation processes in sectors such as infrastructure or extractive industries – in order to understand and mitigate negative consequences, both for the green transition and for businesses (OECD, Forthcoming[4]). To firmly embed this engagement throughout the policy cycle, stakeholder participation should be a central element in both ex ante and ex post evaluations of public policy.
5.1.2. Strengthening coordination and coherence of participation initiatives across levels of governance
The complexity of environmental and climate challenges requires a multi-level governance approach, spanning from the micro-local to the international scale (see Chapter 4). Although these levels address different issues and challenges, each offers opportunities to involve citizens in public debate and action towards a just and equitable green transition.
These levels of government are complementary and mutually reinforcing. For example, micro-local action – such as the direct management of resources or public spaces at the municipal level – can enhance awareness and understanding of environmental issues, encouraging engagement at other levels of governance. Similarly, national or international initiatives to strengthen public information, communication, and participation – such as climate deliberative assemblies – can foster individual behavioural change and the gradual adoption of new patterns of consumption and adaptation at the local level. Together, these interactions can help establish a “virtuous cycle” of environmental and climate action across all dimensions and scales. Studies have also highlighted that a supportive national public opinion on climate policy correlates with higher levels of ambition in government commitments at the international level (Drummond et al., 2018[5]).
While many practices exist and have been showcased throughout this report, it is essential to strengthen the coordination and integration of citizen participation efforts across the various levels of governance (OECD, 2024[2]). This could, for example, involve establishing strong “transmission belts” between levels of government to ensure that the insights and perspectives gathered through citizen participation – whether at the micro-local, local, national, or global level – are effectively shared with all relevant actors (OECD, 2024[2]). Such mechanisms would help amplify the impact of citizen engagement initiatives across levels, while also avoiding excessive solicitation, which can lead to participant fatigue and make it more difficult to demonstrate the real impact of participation.
5.1.3. Embedding open government principles in green governance
To go further, governments could consider formally embedding open government principles into the conceptualisation of “green governance”. The mainstreaming of open government principles into climate and environmental action plans and strategies has the potential to enhance coherence and coordination across initiatives that seek to position citizens as key actors in the green transition. It also reinforces the understanding that these principles are tools to be mobilised throughout the public policy cycle to support green governmental action. Such integration would also help align practices across different levels of government and foster the development of common standards and frameworks for a whole-of-government approach to citizen participation in the green transition. Anchoring participation as a parameter in green public policies is all the more important given that it is referenced in various international frameworks guiding climate action – such as Article 12 of the Paris Agreement or the Escazú Agreement in Latin America and the Caribbean – yet these frameworks stop short of making participation mandatory or providing concrete methodologies for implementing participatory approaches.1 Some countries, such as Ireland, have already taken initial steps in this direction – for example, by including a dedicated citizen participation component in its climate action plan and by developing a strategic communication framework around the green agenda (see Chapter 2).
Findings from the OECD Survey on the Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions highlight how important it is for citizens to feel they have a say in public policy and decision-making—this is a key lever for strengthening trust in government (OECD, 2024[6]).Despite the growing prominence of participatory democracy mechanisms and the increasing number of formal opportunities for citizen engagement over recent decades including the introduction of legal frameworks requiring consultation in certain policy areas, the expanded use of digital tools for large-scale consultations, and the gradual adoption of deliberative processes at local and national levels – the perception among citizens that they are truly heard and that their voice has a tangible impact on public life remains limited.
As the green transition requires both citizen trust and buy-in, integrating citizen participation throughout the public policy cycle offers a double dividend: improved policy effectiveness and enhanced public trust in government. In the face of an environmental crisis coupled with a broader crisis of democracy and declining trust in institutions, it is essential for governments to renew their commitment to fostering effective and meaningful citizen participation – going beyond formal processes whose impact on public ownership of decisions remains limited, or even counterproductive (OECD, 2024[2]).
In response to this challenge – one of the emerging “new frontiers” in the paradigm of citizen participation – the OECD is developing a conceptual framework to identify and address the systemic barriers facing public engagement (OECD, 2024[2]). While these issues will be further explored in upcoming publications, several key challenges – particularly relevant to environmental policymaking – are outlined here as starting points for reflection. They also represent potential avenues for strengthening governance frameworks that enable the full and effective involvement of citizens in the green agenda:
Ensuring transparency and accountability in participation processes to build trust. Transparency and accountability – from the launch of a participatory process to its conclusions – are essential to ensuring the credibility of participation mechanisms and making them effective tools for strengthening trust (OECD, 2022[1]; OECD, 2024[2]). This means clearly defining, from the outset, the purpose, objectives, and expected outcomes of a consultation process and communicating them to the public in order to manage expectations and anchor the process within the realities of policymaking. Participants must understand the scope, purpose, and possible limitations of the participation process. This can include a information and government commitment, in advance, to how citizen contributions will be used. Downstream, results should be published and widely communicated, with an explanation of how they influenced final decisions, including why certain contributions were not taken forward. This enhances transparency and accountability, facilitates citizen monitoring, and reinforces the value of public input in policymaking.
Better align citizen-facing efforts deployed by governments (e.g. public communication, information disclosure, open data, consultation and deliberation processes) with the internal administrative infrastructure (such as public financial management, regulatory impact assessments, legislative and regulatory drafting, and planning), which often remains opaque or overlooked by citizens (OECD, 2024[2]). This disconnect between the spaces where citizens engage and the inner workings of the administration can lead to a gap between public expectations and the actual room for manoeuvre at various stages of the policy cycle. It is therefore essential to integrate budgetary aspects – including cost estimates, available resources, and funding for the green transition – into the dialogue with citizens from the outset, in order to ensure the medium- and long-term viability of decisions and policies.
Explore the intrinsic benefits of citizen participation as a means of learning and fostering active citizenship (OECD, 2024[2]). Impact assessments of citizen participation processes have traditionally focused on their instrumental value – such as improving the quality, effectiveness, acceptability, or legitimacy of public policies – while paying far less attention to the intrinsic benefits they offer to participants themselves. Citizen participation across various levels helps to strengthen trust, ownership, and agency by (re)engaging individuals with public affairs in a context marked by growing disengagement from representative democratic structures. In the specific context of the green transition, one of the key added values of deliberative processes lies in their immersive learning dimension. These processes not only enhance participants’ knowledge, capacities, and understanding of the specific topics under discussion, but also foster broader civic skills essential for public reasoning, dialogue, and democratic deliberation. Moreover, by placing participants in direct contact with policymaking structures and decision-making frameworks, such processes help empower citizens to better understand and engage with the public policy cycle more regularly. This enhanced sense of agency can also motivate behavioural change and individual initiative.
Ensuring inclusive participation. The inclusiveness of participation mechanisms – from the information to the engagement level – is a critical factor in ensuring that all citizens, including the most vulnerable or marginalised, are involved in the green transition. Various forms of inequality – such as socio-economic status, gender, education level, age, or geographic location – can affect citizens’ access to participation opportunities. Recognising and understanding these inequalities is the first step for governments to design targeted actions and mechanisms to address them, and to give all citizens a voice. Inclusion is particularly important in the context of green public policies, as it enables the assessment of how the impacts of measures are distributed across different population groups, and the implementation of initiatives to strengthen fairness and equity in the green transition where needed.
The conceptualisation of citizen participation is therefore evolving rapidly, driven by growing interest in addressing fundamental and complex challenges – such as the environmental and climate emergency – which cannot be tackled without public support, and by the pressing need to restore trust in governments. The OECD stands ready to continue supporting these efforts by developing strategic and analytical frameworks informed by the wealth of practices observed across its member and partner countries.
References
[5] Drummond, A. et al. (2018), “Is public awareness and perceived threat of climate change associated with governmental mitigation targets?”, Climatic Change, Vol. 149/2, pp. 159-171, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2230-2.
[3] OECD (2025), OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2025, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/56b60e39-en.
[2] OECD (2024), Exploring New Frontiers of Citizen Participation in the Policy Cycle: Discussion Paper, OECD Publishing, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/programmes/reinforcing-democracy-initiative/Exploring-New-Frontiers-of-Citizen-Participation-Discussion-Paper.pdf.
[6] OECD (2024), OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions – 2024 Results: Building Trust in a Complex Policy Environment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9a20554b-en.
[1] OECD (2022), OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.
[4] OECD (Forthcoming), Managing Risks and Incentivising Growth: Draft Best Practice Principles for Licensing and Permitting, OECD Publishing.
← 1. For example, while the Paris Agreement calls on signatory countries to develop and implement nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – that is, five-year climate action plans – it does not provide a methodological framework to ensure that these NDCs are developed with public participation.