It is a joint initiative of several bodies including the Iswe Foundation Archived 2024-06-06 at the Wayback Machine, Danish Board of Technology, and the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra and has multiple funders including the Scottish Government and the European Climate Foundation and is supported by the United Nations.
The concept of a citizens' assembly was first developed in the form of a deliberative poll by James Fishkin in 1988, intended to model the conclusions a community would make if it were able to meet together and engage in informed deliberation on the issues.
The Assembly was selected from lists of people identified at these locations by local community organisations, to provide a representative sample of the global population.
The Assembly was to answer the question "How can humanity address the climate and ecological crisis in a fair and effective way?
[5] The Global Assembly intends to continue to convene and to expand participation to ten million persons from around the world by 2030.