'World Wide Views' is a methodology for global citizen deliberation. A 'World Wide Views' project is a way of giving a nuanced and in-depth picture of what people from different parts of the world think about key issues affecting their lives. World Wide Views on Global Warming in 2009 was the first World Wide Views meeting with 4000 participating citizens in 38 countries. World Wide Views on Biodiversity in 2012 was the second World Wide Views meeting with 3000 participating citizens in 25 countries. The citizens were selected to reflect the demographic diversity in their respective countries and regions. They were provided with unbiased information about the subject and were given time to deliberate with fellow citizens at the meetings. Links to World Wide Views on Biodiversity and World Wide Views on Global Warming.

Why World Wide Views?
The idea is to introduce citizen participation, which is normally used only as a national tool, on a global level. National meetings with 100 citizens each are held during one day, and their answers to a set of predefined questions were reported into an online web-tool. Consulting citizens from all over the world gives a stronger foundation for making political decisions. It presents a diversity of views on how to deal with a certain issue that relates to the daily lives of citizens all over the world.

Results from World Wide Views on Biodiversity
The results from World Wide Views on Biodiversity shows that there is a strong public support for taking further political action in order to stop the decline in biodiversity. Even though the results differ from country to country, between continents and across age, the results are fairly similar. An interesting result is that the citizens worldwide are very concerned about the loss of biodiversity. Citizens think most people in the world are seriously affected by biodiversity loss and more participants from developing countries than developed think that their country is so. They furthermore see the protection of coral reefs as a shared responsibility. Get the Results Report here.

Or see all the results here.

What’s going on right now?
The WWViews Alliance is now in searching for financial funds to carry out a World Wide Views on Biodiversity in 2014. This is the first step in organizing WWViews citizen consultations on Biodiversity in connection to the COP’s on Biodiversity.

Contacts

Bjørn BEDSTED
Project manager and WWViews coordinator
Phone: +45 3078 5171
E-mail: bb@tekno.dk

Søren GRAM
Project manager and WWViews coordinator
Phone: +45 3078 5167
E-mail: sg@tekno.dk

Marie Louise JØRGENSEN
Project manager
Phone: +45 3078 5173
E-mail: mlj@tekno.dk

Press contact

Jørgen MADSEN
Project press manager
Phone: +45 3078 5168
E-mail: jm@tekno.dk

For further contacts

Videos

Links

Get more information on the Method here.

See the press releases here.

The Danish Board of Technology received the international ’The Jim Creighton Award’ 2010 for the contribution of public participation by organizing World Wide Views on Global Warming in 2009.

See all the publications from World Wide Views on Biodiversity here.

Visit our youtube channels to see videos about World Wide Views on Biodiversity.

Videos showing different preparations before the meetings

Videos from COP11

Information videos in English