(En)Visioning Justice: Citizens’ Assemblies and Energy Futures in the Global South

On this page: Energy Justice | Citizens’ Assemblies | Final Event | Team | Resources

Introduction

The (En)Visioning Justice project at UCL Urban Laboratory sought to centre citizens in national, regional and global decisions on energy policy, and to incorporate a Global South perspective into the academic discussion of Energy Justice, particularly as it relates to our planetary future.

To that end, the team has pioneered a bottom-up approach to energy justice research, emphasising methodological innovation and community engagement. By centring lived experiences and political realities, the project contributed to a critical scholarship that set a forward-looking research agenda for the region through two intertwined tracks.

Track 1: Knowledge production and critical scholarship on energy justice

Within the global discussion of energy transitions, this track of the project explores the everyday reality and future imaginaries that could and should frame the priorities of the energy transition in the Arab region. We do this by nurturing a locally grounded and globally engaged space for debate on just energy futures by academics in the field.

This track aimed to solidify this community of practice around a shared agenda for future energy justice work with a set of roundtables and workshops with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), Century International and Georgetown-Qatar Energy Humanities group. Based on a mapping of key scholars and publications on energy justice in the Arab countries, we first organised a workshop with key scholars on the state of the field and setting a research agenda for the region (online, June 2024). The project engaged with academics and practitioners in the energy field in the region and internationally, including:

• Roundtable titled ‘Power, Panels, Pipelines and People: An Energy Justice Agenda for the Arab World’ as part of the ACSS regional conference in Beirut, Lebanon (May 2025). Read the proceedings.
• The team presented at the Divergent Pathways to Energy Justice:  Comparative Perspectives from MENA  conference organised by the Arab Reform Initiative (December 2025).
• Thinking Energy from the Ground Up: Methodologies from Critical Social Research, a workshop at Hiwaraat conference, at Georgetown University Qatar, led by Ala’a Shehabi, Muzna Al-Masri and Dana Abi Ghanem. Watch the video and read the wrap-up: Five Important Lessons on Pursuing Energy Justice From The “Decolonizing Energy” Conference. (October 2025)
• Participated in two hybrid workshops organised by Century International in collaboration with Beirut Urban Lab to discuss the political economy of energy in Lebanon (September 2025). A report will be published to disseminate the findings from the energy narratives created during the CAs.
• Organised a panel on conceptions and imaginaries of energy Justice in the Arab World at the ACSS regional conference in Beirut, Lebanon, with contributions on research on Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine (May 2025).

Track 2: Citizens’ Assemblies as a methodological innovation in the energy sector

A notable methodological innovation has been the use of citizens’ assemblies as deliberative spaces for co-creating energy visions and solutions. In this track, two CAs in Lebanon and Tunisia were convened on the theme of energy transition, equity and sustainability.

The assemblies convened communities on the critical questions that may open visions for new energy politics and just futures, and the challenges to achieving them. The CAs also allowed the scientific community the opportunity to decipher the complexity of an energy system to the general public, and to listen to their concerns, priorities and experiences. The planning of the CAs allowed for the creation of a multidisciplinary community of practice around energy, within the countries, but also allowed for knowledge exchange between Tunisia and Lebanon.

• The CA in Beirut, Lebanon, addressed the electricity crisis and collective models of solar energy production. Organised by Jibal, the three-day assembly generated recommendations on energy cooperative models (November 2025). Read the technical report.
  • Find out more on the @ca_lebanon Instagram page
  • View the coverage of the CA on Facebook and Instagram, via Megaphone, a local independent media outlet
• The Citizens’ Assembly in Tunis addressed the green hydrogen strategy in Gabes, amidst a wave of protests in the Southern city. Organised by Al Bawsala, the two-day assembly generated recommendations on sustainable alternatives centring citizens’ health and the environment (December 2025). Read the technical report.
• An Arabic-language toolkit was co-produced with Jibal and Al Bawsala to guide practitioners in organising such assemblies, fostering wider adoption of inclusive energy governance practices. The toolkit provides a Global South perspective on the value of CAs in non-democratic contexts, as well as practical guidance and tools for organising CAs that respond to locally volatile contexts. Read the toolkit.
• A journal article, ’Decolonising Deliberation: Citizens’ Assemblies as a Claimed Space for Forging Bottom‐Up Democracy in Lebanon and Tunisia’, in the Politics and Governance journal, argues that the application of institutionalised deliberative processes in the Global North raises critical questions around their adaptability and legitimacy in fragile contexts in the Global South (November 2025).
• From local CAs to the Global Citizen Assembly – Our work on CAs in the Middle East led us to partner with ISWE as the Regional Leads for the Middle East and to support the implementation of the Global Citizen Assembly (GCA) on food systems and climate change in 2026. We coordinated the work of local partners in six countries (Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia) and contributed to wider methodological discussions.
• Interview on Climate Assemblies in the MENA region with international IDEA (March 2025).
• The team presented the CAs as methods from below for the articulation of alternative imaginaries at the event, New Urban Imperatives Symposium: Reparative and Decolonial Praxis, as part of UCL Urban Lab’s 20th anniversary programme (October 2025).
• Convened a consultation meeting on deliberative democracies and practices in Lebanon, leveraging the value of citizens’ assemblies and adapting them to the political context in Lebanon and countries in the region (online, July 2024).
• The team presented at a panel on ‘Transnational Citizens’ Assemblies for Climate Action’ at the ALF 2025 Forum: From Knowledge to Action: Redefining Dialogue in the Euro Mediterranean Region (online, June 2025).

Final Project Event: Citizens’ Assemblies for Energy Justice – Experiences from and Toolkit for the Arab Region

The final event to disseminate learning from the project and launch the toolkit was convened on 29 January 2026. Attendees from the energy justice and democratic innovations communities were invited, both from regional and international institutions and initiatives. The event presented the two CAs organised in Tunisia and Lebanon, as well as the launch of the toolkit.

Watch the recording.

Project team

For further information, to submit feedback or to enquire about collaboration, please contact the project team members.

• Ala’a Shehabi (Co-Principal Investigator and Associate Professor (Teaching) of Middle East Politics)
• Muzna Al-Masri (Co-Principal Investigator and Senior Research Fellow, UCL Urban Lab)
• Mariam Daher
• Dana Abi Ghanem

Related Resources

• Video: What is a Citizen’s Assembly?
• Website: First Citizens’ Assembly on Electricity and Energy Justice in Lebanon
• Report: First Citizens’ Assembly on Electricity and Energy Justice in Lebanon
• Video: First Citizens’ Assembly on Electricity and Energy Justice in Lebanon