The newly created European Heritage Hub – http://www.europeanheritagehub.eu – in which Europa Nostra plays a leading role has launched a campaign Putting Culture & Heritage at the Heart of Climate Action to highlight and strengthen the role of the arts, culture and heritage sectors in addressing the climate crisis. A first high level step has been to raise awareness of participant nations in the UN Framework Climate Change Convention and this has already achieved inclusion for the first time a “Ministerial Dialogue” event on culture issues in the schedule for the COP 28 conference in Dubai. Further steps envisage a Joint Work Decision to undertake a year-long wide ranging consultation to develop a programme of good practice recommendations and illustrations of ways by which sector bodies can strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change.
The Call to Action seeks support from organisations of all kinds – large and small – across the arts, culture and heritage sectors by subscribing to the campaign statement. A large number of major international organisations are “Founding Signatories” but the aim is to be able to demonstrate support from a much broader range of bodies (e.g. museums, heritage sites, performing arts).
Over the last few weeks several hundred bodies from Europe (and far beyond!) have already subscribed. Encouragingly, the list includes a wide range of organisations within the UK.
Fuller information (including the list of signatories to date and the full Campaign document) and how to subscribe can be found on the Climate Heritage website at https://www.climateheritage.org/jwd