Conceptual Framework to Study the Politics of Climate Risk Management in Local Government

Contemporary climate risk management in local governments tends to fortify existing risk governance, normalize an extraordinary situation, and depoliticize the issue of climate change by favoring technical approaches. This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework based on securitization and riskification to empirically investigate the politics of climate risk management in local government. Despite the increasing importance of local action in handling climate change, this level of government has received limited attention in the riskification literature. By applying risk logic as an explanatory approach, this framework identifies the effects of climate risk management on climate change policy and action. Together with the discourse used, actors involved, and tools employed, this constitutes the politics of climate risk management. The findings contribute to ongoing debates on how increasingly threatening climate change futures are translated into a bureaucratic system characterized by a prevalence of risk governance. The paper concludes by suggesting reconsideration of referent objects as a future research avenue to advance climate risk management in local government.

Keywords: Climate change, Riskification, Securitization, Politics, Risk logic, Climate risk management.