Culture faces the climate emergency

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A historic moment for the cultural sector after it was included among the strategic priorities in Rome Declaration From the G20 leaders as an engine of sustainable development and resilience, these days it has played a crucial role in COP 26United Nations World Climate Summit. Organized by the United Kingdom, in partnership with Italy, the twenty-sixth edition of the Conference of the Parties was held in Glasgow between 31 October and 12 November and brought together more than 190 representatives of governments, businesses and citizens with a view to modernizing Paris Accords We hope to achieve zero net global emissions by 2050. “We are on track to climate catastrophe,” UN President Antonio Guterres declared at the opening of the conference, warning that commitments made in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gases were no longer enough. And that in the next ten years we will produce an increase in the average temperature of 2.7 degrees and not 1.5 degrees as was the purpose of the agreement.

Climate crisis and art

Mitigating the climate crisis is perhaps the greatest and most urgent challenge faced by man; If, in these circumstances, hope is certainly a moral obligation, it cannot be the only strategy. To remind us of this is the grand installation of “NO NEW WORLD” by the English group still / moving, which nowadays dominates the port of Jovan Graving in front of the main entrance to the event and which appears to respond to the hoped-for work of David Buckland, established for COP21 in Paris in 2015, where the text “Another world is possible“It was dropped on a melting iceberg. A definite designation so far for art in the COP, which this year has been collected under cover Climate marginIt is a festival in which the artist also participated Olafur Eliasson With two functions: the “Grace of the Sun” light fixture powered by 1,000 solar lights and documentary Made with a South African activist Kumi Naidoo.

Climate Heritage Network

It has always been known that art is a great tool for conveying complex contents, but in the fight against the climate crisis, the cultural sector can play a more strategic role. This is confirmed by the rent Calendar From events organized during the COP since then Climate Heritage Network, the large thematic network established in 2019 to mobilize international cultural organizations for climate action and which launched its first manifesto in GlasgowAccelerating climate action through the power of arts, culture and heritage.” Signed by nearly 2,000 cultural organizations around the world, the statement asks governments to incorporate the insights and skills of culture professionals, from artists to archaeologists, in fighting climate change not only in communication, but also in energy, construction, mobility or Farming.

“Humanity can gain speed and efficiency if the green transformation is guided by cultural values. In fact, more coordination is needed so that culture is included in national strategies and sector operators are the first spokespersons for the green approach in all their actions. Italy is one of the few countries So far that has included cultural heritage within its heritage National Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation As a critical infrastructure, a document which unfortunately has not yet completed the formal adoption process” Armenia Schiachetano, lectured at COP26 for the Ministry of Culture which on 8 November co-organized the event with the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport International Cultural Heritage, Adaptation and Resilience: From Rome to Glasgow, Cooperation is part of the commitments at the heart of the Multilateral Agenda 2021 that countries have undertaken through the G7, G20 and COP 26 presidencies. The purpose of the meeting was opened by the Minister Franceschini and its English counterpart Nadine Doris The G20 Culture Ministers’ Declaration Letters, which emphasized the need to take advantage of the COP26 opportunity to increase attention to the damage that climate change is doing to cultural heritage, but also to the solutions that culture provides, were to be re-launched. Presents climate action as a key tool for imagining new strategies for housing adaptation for communities as mentioned in Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (particularly in SDG 11.4).

What are the solutions in culture?

If a culture is severely affected by the effects of disasters linked to climate change, from the erosion of monuments to the destruction of the ecosystems of indigenous communities, it also offers unexpected solutions. Green Leaf of European Cultural Heritage Putting the common European heritage at the heart of the European Green Deal, written by Our Europe With Icomos and the Climate Heritage Network m, an overview of the possibilities offered by the sector that can serve as a bridge for cooperation between culture and science. The document points out first and foremost the potential convergence of community-based participatory planning methodologies in planning for adaptation to environmental changes. It continues with the opportunity presented by rethinking the intended uses of cultural heritage as an alternative to over-construction and exploitation of the soil, and then moves on to the inexhaustible resources offered by cultural heritage sites that become a valuable observatory of climatic processes, useful not only for establishing and understanding shifting baselines and past adaptation efforts , but also to offer our own solutions that humanity devised before the advent of fossil fuels, which is what the Paris Agreement calls indigenous technologies, and which today in fact find new importance.