The making of a climate emergency response: Examining the attributes of climate emergency plans

Abstract

Climate emergency declarations are amongst the strongest statement from governments in the face of global warming. At least 1217 local governments have so far declared a climate emergency; however, on a national government level, only seven such declarations have been made, most of which were in 2019. The exponential rise of local governments declaring a climate emergency is significant, and developing an understanding of how these responses are operationalised is critical. Previous studies indicate that local government practitioners conceptualise climate change as a complex emergency but tend to suggest ‘business as usual’ responses, unfit to deal with this complexity. Since these governments around the world have declared climate emergencies, it is unknown if the newly released climate emergency plans still tend to suggest such ‘business as usual’ response approaches or if we are now seeing the making of a more complex response to the complex threat of climate change. In this paper, we review two local governments' climate emergency plans: Auckland (New Zealand) and the City of Darebin (Melbourne, Australia). Our research develops a conceptual understanding of climate emergency mode (10 critical key attributes are articulated) and we reveal through the review of our two cases that this understanding is embedded in policy documents to varying degrees but give little explicit attention to processes of prioritisation or economic mobilisation. This research contributes to an initial understanding of a climate emergency mode in governance systems and provides a way forward from business as normal to a complex emergency response for climate change.