Abstract
The UK, like other countries, has seen a proliferation of declarations of local climate emergencies. While these declarations have been interpreted as a demonstration of ambition, little is known about how and why they actually came about when they did and the implications this will have for what happens next. Focusing on London, UK, we present evidence collected via semi-structured interviews with experts and practitioners involved in the propagation of climate emergency declarations to critically explore how and why these declarations emerged, and the various different roles they are perceived to play for different local actors. Our findings reveal four journeys to local government declaration of a climate emergency (made actively from above, passively from above, actively from below, and passively from across) and three interwoven purposes (statements of intent, acting as a political gesture, and stimulating local action). We argue that these three purposes combine and coalesce to correlate the declaration of climate emergency with a local responsibility for emissions reduction, leaving little analytical space to question the scalar disconnect between the immediacy of the narrative at local scales and the slow-burning (and) global nature of the threat in question. If these emergency declarations are to be an opportunity for change in the governance of climate change, then the question of ‘what next?’ requires more in-depth, thorough and constructive engagement with the type of climate action the declarations are expected to induce while considering how this aligns with existing responsibilities and resource bases of local government.
Highlights
In this paper, we engage with the phenomena of climate emergency declarations, which have been enacted by local actors across the world since 2016
What is your take on the climate emergency declarations (CED)? What was their story in London in 2019? Why do you think CEDs have come about? How were the declarations perceived? Are they effective ways of enhancing climate action? Why do you think some boroughs have chosen not to declare a climate emergency? What is missing from the CEDs? What needs ‘watching’ that the declarations have been made?
By analysing the climate emergency declarations made by London borough councils, this paper has expanded our understanding of what such emergency declarations by local governments are and how they came about at the time that they did and, most importantly, provided solid conceptual grounding for the asking the question on many people lips: what comes next? Having framed climate change’s status as a local governance issue using the concept of ‘slow emergency’, we identified four journeys to declaration each demonstrating the roles played by forces both within and beyond the control of local governments
Summary
We engage with the phenomena of climate emergency declarations, which have been enacted by local actors across the world since 2016. Climatic Change governance at the local scale have been energized by the widespread declaration of an emergency state at multiple levels (e.g. states, companies, museums, universities). The climate debates in London’s boroughs are in many ways typical of the local governance dynamics in other UK cities and around the world, for example, in terms of party politics, local delivery capacity and multilevel governance. We unpack the language used with regard to the climate emergency in order to problematise the seeming disconnect between the scale of the emergency (global) and who is declaring a commitment to address this (local governments). Our concluding section (Section 6) reflects on how the paper’s findings add significant depth to our understanding of what might come ‘’ following a declaration, before pointing to avenues for future research
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