Emergent Spaces of Emergency Claims: Possibilities and Contestation in a National Climate Emergency Declaration

Abstract

Climate emergency declarations have become a prominent mechanism within the environmental movement to emphasise the urgency of the climate crisis, with this activism prompting numerous declarations from governments. Embedded in these declarations are claims of emergency, which hold representations of how different actors make sense of the present political moment and imagine trajectories of change. We analyse the contested meanings of public emergency claims made by activists and the state in Aotearoa New Zealand’s national climate emergency declaration. Identifying three framings of emergency as an objective truth, an activating property, and a responsibility, our analysis suggests emergency declarations hold ambiguous potential for more radical action on climate change. While opening political space on what emergency means, we argue emergency claims hold risks of depoliticising climate politics and re-embedding the neoliberal status quo. Emergency claims also contain tensions in imaginaries of transformation, suggesting the importance of contestation within climate emergency declarations.