Retrofitting an emergency approach to the climate crisis: A study of two climate emergency declarations in Aotearoa New Zealand

In the last year, hundreds of climate emergency declarations have been made by local and national governments around the world. Instigated through grassroots activism, these declarations have become a focus of aspirations for radical climate action. However, concerns have also raised been about the desirability of emergency declarations in responding to the climate crisis, including at a local scale. In this paper we consider the enactment of emergency declarations by two local government authorities in Aotearoa New Zealand that have recent experience with multiple crises. Drawing on in-depth interviews with activists, councillors and officials, our findings show that adopting the ‘international language’ of climate emergency can be a source of hope but also tension. In particular, we highlight the struggle of local practitioners to overlay an emergency approach, something that is already contested in response to sudden onset disasters, with the scale, complexity and temporality of climate change. Our analysis suggests that retrofitting an emergency approach to the climate crisis at the local scale has the potential to reproduce status quo politics, and calls for a greater understanding of the diversity of approaches to emergency in climate politics.