Kamakura passed Declaration of Climate Emergency to warn citizens on Climate Crisis

The city council of Kamakura passed the Climate Emergency Declaration (CED) on October 4. This declaration requires the city to act for resolving issues related to climate change, and to warn citizens on the urgent climate crisis the world is facing today. Thus, the city of Kamakura will establish a regime to act for the declaration hereafter. Kamakura is a “SDGs Future City” and making this declaration is part of its role to act for building a sustainable society.

As of August 2019, climate emergency is declared in more than 900 state and local governments in 18 countries across the world to tackle climate change related issues. The city of Iki in Nagasaki prefecture passed the CED in September and became the first city to declare climate emergency in Japan.

The term “climate emergency” was first used by a network of grassroots climate activists and organizations in Australia. In 2016, the Darebin city council became the first local council to declare climate emergency. And in 2019, the UK Parliament declared climate emergency: the first nation in the world to make this declaration. This action is quickly spreading across the world today.

Declaring a climate crisis is to state that the climate is in an urgent situation and needs emergent action to fix it. The movement of demanding local governments to declare climate emergency is led by climate activists and citizens. However, it is obvious that tackling environmental issues need concrete action rather than words. So why is this declaration becoming such a big issue across the world?

One reason is that by declaring climate emergency, it will oblige local governments to act for aiming the goals. Like any other announcements or manifestos made by authorities, once they are made, they will be put on record by the citizens. Therefore, they need to be followed by concrete action.

Another reason is by passing the declaration, more citizens will come to know or deepen their understanding on climate change, its consequences and the urgent issues that need to be handled. These global-scale environmental crisis cannot be tackled only by governments or public organizations but need every citizens’ awareness and effort. Therefore, acknowledging people who have less interest in the environment is indispensable. Moreover, because the local government is expected to play its role as a coordinator for regional strategies and actions, raising awareness on environmental issues among members of the city council are efficient for building a sustainable society.

According to a report on climate change and its impact on Japan, issued by the Ministry of Environment of Japan, the national government, local governments, businesses, non-government organization and citizens are all important entities expected to contribute to environmentally, mutually and individually, to reduce environmental burden. Raising citizens’ awareness on environmental issues is critical, because every person’s daily life results in the impact on the environment.

Many efforts are already made and widely implemented throughout Japan: using reusable shopping bags, new material to replace paper and plastics, changing consumption patterns like promoting use of personal water bottles. But the declaration is trying to reach a harder goal, for example net zero emissions of anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases and promoting ethical consumption. At this point, some are a lot less aware about climate emergency than others, because these issues do not seem “real” to them. Expectantly, the local governments’ declaration will have an impact on people’s understanding towards building an eco-friendly and sustainable society.