Chemical Crisis

Abstract

The proposition that there is a planetary chemical crisis that exists in conjunction with the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis has been increasingly discussed. Indeed, according to the United Nations Environment Programme there is a ‘triple planetary crisis’ (climate, biodiversity, chemical), while many others argue that there is a ‘polycrisis’, of which the environmental crises are but elements. Prompted by Gisela Welz’s account of how the Cyprus economic crisis was ‘identified by experts’, and reflecting on Reinhardt Koselleck’s, Janet Roitman’s and Stuart Hall’s analyses of the concept of crisis, I argue that the chemical crisis might be understood as an event that has come to take multiple forms, remains contested and is without resolution.