SOAS Research Online

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate among climate activists and scholars on the merits of ‘climate emergency’ frames, which mirrors debates in critical security studies on the benefits and risks of ‘securitization’. Climate emergency advocates demonstrate that rapid transformative action beyond ‘normal’ politics is needed to meet the Paris agreement targets. Critics, on the other hand, highlight the risks of deploying emergency frames to galvanize climate action, which may simply result in failed securitizations or even in emergency suspensions of democratic norms that advance climate action at the expense of climate justice. This paper will engage this debate by exploring the question: could climate emergency mobilizations be compatible with climate justice? I will argue, following Andreas Kalyvas, that the climate emergency can be framed as an opportunity for an ‘extraordinary politics’ of democratic constituent power, though this would involve risks and trade-offs that must be negotiated in practice.