Understanding Urgency in Climate Action: Reframing Time, Power, and Justice

Abstract (English)

The urgency narrative in climate change discourse plays a central role in shaping public perceptions and influencing policy responses. However, this dominant narrative often fails to account for the complex socio-ecological entanglements that underpin climate crises, both at global and local levels. This panel aims to critically interrogate how the construct of urgency influences our understanding of climate change and the strategies developed to address it, particularly in how it can marginalize long-term, justice-driven approaches to climate action. Rather than accepting urgency as an unquestioned framework, we seek to explore how this perspective may obscure the deeper, relational processes required for sustainable and equitable climate solutions. The panel will examine the ways in which urgency is constructed, mobilized, and contested across various contexts, critically questioning its implications for both global and local strategies in climate mitigation and adaptation, and exploring alternative approaches that prioritize long-term ecological repair.

The panel explores the following subtopics:
• Temporalities of Post-Carbon Democracy: Reimagining alternative temporalities that reframe climate justice and socio-ecological relations beyond immediate crisis management.
• Technologies of Urgency and Intervention: Investigating how technologies are mobilized within urgency-driven discourses, and how this affects long-term strategies for climate solutions.
• Futuring Ecological Repair: Exploring alternative practices to ecological repair that prioritize long-term sustainability, care, and justice, in contrast to immediate and reactive approaches.
• Power, Inequality, and the Politics of Urgency: Examining how urgency narratives are mobilized and if they exacerbate power imbalances reinforcing existing inequalities.
• Socio-Ecological Entanglements and Urgency: Analyzing how socio-ecological entanglements shape the perceptions of urgency, and how the rush for immediate action may overlook the complex relationships between humans, non-humans, and the environment.
• Grassroots Movements and More-than-Human Mobilizations: Investigating how grassroots movements and more-than-human entanglements challenge urgency-driven narratives by promoting alternative responses to climate action.

This panel encourages participants to critically examine how urgency narratives shape climate action and consider alternative pathways that prioritize relational care, long-term sustainability, and social justice, beyond the immediate and reactionary responses typically associated with the climate crisis. We particularly invite contributions grounded in ethnographic research that explore how urgency is framed and contested in diverse socio-ecological contexts, shedding light on the ways in which people and communities respond to and reshape climate crises through everyday practices and lived experiences.