It depends on which councillor you ask.

The question came to the fore last week as neighbouring council Eurobodalla was called on by several members of the public to make a similar declaration.

Five presenters at a public forum before the Eurobodalla Shire Council meeting on July 26 called for the declaration of a 'climate emergency' during discussions to endorse an updated climate action plan.

Though the plan was carried, a motion to declare a climate emergency was not tabled by councillors.

In the Bega Valley, a climate emergency declaration was passed in 2019 after being proposed by Greens councillor Cathy Griff.

It was carried with the support of Cr Liz Seckold, former Crs Jo Dodds, Sharon Tapscott, and former mayor Kristy McBain.

Councillors Russell Fitzpatrick, Robyn Bain and Mitchell Nadin voted against the move, while Cr Tony Allen was absent.

Unlike in the Eurobodalla, the Bega Valley Shire's declaration was tabled in conjunction with the Climate Resilience Strategy 2050. Cr Griff said looking back it was the marrying of the two that helped it pass.

"It wasn't just a declaration in a vacuum, it was very closely tied to the policy we were introducing at the time, so it was worded in that way too," she said.

So what has the declaration actually achieved since it was brought on by council?

Cr Griff said the declaration had "great symbolic value" as it connected council to a large number of other councils who were in agreement that climate change was a matter for all levels of governance.

She said it enabled council to take part in the Climate Council's Cities Power Partnership (CPP) - the largest local government climate program, with 100 councils representing almost 11 million Australians.

She thought it was difficult for ratepayers to identify exactly what had come about from the declaration, but that it was a more "behind the scenes" effort that enabled everything through council to be viewed from the lens of the "climate emergency".

She gave practical examples of it having helped prioritise solar panels on new builds such as on the multi-use sports facility in Pambula.

"There is much more we could be doing and I am hopeful that work will happen, it's just, given the emergency - it needs to happen urgently," she said.

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On the other hand, Cr Allen thought the declaration had brought "political agendas into local government" and had not achieved much more than virtue signalling.

He did not believe local government should be dictated by philosophical ideas pushed by the three major parties, nor be a "battle ground" to help to push "personal political agendas".

He said there was a big push from the Greens to divest from companies tied to the fossil fuel industry, but he thought council money should be focused on investing funds to get the best returns for ratepayers.

"I as a councillor have to be responsible to the ratepayers - the people paying the bills - and ensure they're getting the best value for their dollar.

"We're community based and we should be there solely for the community," he said.

Cr Griff thought both the climate strategy and declaration did not go far enough.

She thought council's "budget and funding issues" were tending to "take precedence" over prioritising desperate measures to improve the climate resilience of the community and council-owned facilities.

She suggested wanting to improve public planting policies to maximise tree canopies in towns to reduce temperatures, as well as looking to transition council's fleet over to electronic vehicles.

"Often these things come with an upfront cost and so sometimes there is the idea that the cost of transitioning may be high, so therefore the speed of change is not as fast as it should be in the circumstances."

She thought the economics of renewable energy spoke for themselves and it was "less possible to argue against moving in that direction," she said.

Cr Allen thought the idea of converting the council's fleet to electric cars would be impracticable, especially in the event of another natural disaster - for example during the Black Summer bushfires power supplies were inaccessible for extended periods of time.

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"It would just be an absolute nightmare" he said.

Cr Allen said he thought council had gotten "weighed down" with responsibility for climate change policy, especially in light of residents already taking "very good" care of their environment and 75 per cent of the shire reserved for national parks or state forests.

He thought Bega Valley businesses were already doing much to reduce their impact through innovative techniques and switching away from techniques that degraded the environment.

"With better machinery and practices we're all doing it better and smarter, but at the end of the day you still have to have the ability to produce food, timber, and the likes.

"The world has to roll on but in the meantime everyone's conscious of doing it better," he said.

He thought a more practical way council could improve the shire's environmental impact was by sealing dirt roads to stop erosion and reduce runoff into rivers and onto oyster leases.