Across Divides Podcast – Featured Episodes
We invited guests from across the island’s regions and jurisdictions to explore the challenges faced by communities. These conversations were rich with perspectives from a diversity of ages and traditions, abilities and genders, and experiences from engaging on issues such as mental health in a post-conflict context, rural isolation across the island, digital poverty, the biodiversity activists, climate change, justice and equality, inclusion, and cross-community work.
Featured Episodes
Participatory democracy and the ability for ordinary citizens to deliberate on the choices we face as a society was the hot topic at the first Community and Voluntary National Civic Forum (ROI) held in Dublin on 21 November. The Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (ROI) is a good example of deliberative democracy in practice. It closed with calls “to deliver substantive and procedural environmental rights for both people and nature.” The UK had previously held a Climate Assembly, which called on the UK government to “forge a cross-party consensus that allows for certainty, long-term planning and a phased transition.” This was achieved in Northern Ireland when it passed its first Climate Action bill into law in June 2022 because of a historic sustained effort by civil society to advance climate legislation in partnership with cross-party politicians and independent legal experts. Community-level collaboration, participation, and deliberation on these critical issues were the focus of a number of episodes of Across Divides. These are two of them:
