The Climate Heritage Network (CHN) has announced the launch of the “Imagining Low Carbon, Just, Climate Resilient Futures Through Culture and Heritage” project, made possible by a generous $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This transformative initiative aims to leverage culture and heritage as powerful catalysts for effective climate action, empowering communities worldwide to safeguard their cultural legacies while promoting sustainable futures.

The Climate Heritage Network (CHN) is a global network of more than 250 member organisations committed to supporting communities in achieving the ambitions of the Paris Agreement by scaling up culture-based climate action. The new Action Plan announced today by the network of organisations, charities, government bodies, universities, memory and cultural institutions, and cultural and creative industries from around the world seeks to fill this gap.

The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, known as MONDIACULT 2022, opens on 28 September in Mexico City, Mexico. The Conference, which brings together national Ministers of Culture from around the world, is meant to be ‘a renewed reflection on cultural policies to tackle global challenges and outline immediate and future priorities.’

The long awaited International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change (ICSM CHC) has arrived! This groundbreaking meeting will be of interest to anyone concerned about the better incorporation of culture and heritage into climate science and research.

For over a year, Climate Heritage Network members and partners have been working on ways to signal boost cultural voices at COP26 and beyond. The need is urgent. We’re excited to share with you some what we planned as well as some of the ways that you can participate wherever you are in the world.

It’s great to talk about mobilising arts, culture & heritage for climate action but what does that really mean & how do we do it? In the run up to the 2021 UN Climate Conference, COP26, the Climate Heritage Network in partnership with Historic England presents Climate Heritage Mobilisation @ Climate Fridays — a webinar series that explores how we dismantle barriers to greater engagement by cultural operators in climate action, and how we scale up and out culture-based solutions to climate change.

The Climate Heritage Network invites you to Climate Heritage Narratives: Youth-Led Intergenerational Dialogues, a series of events occuring from 27 September to 4 October, 2021, designed to enable intergenerational exchanges between youth, emerging professionals and experts engaged in culural heritage and climate change, with youth taking the lead.

The Italian Ministry of Culture has announced the final programme for groundbreaking webinars on 12 and 13 April, 2021, that mark the first time that the topic of culture and climate change will be featured at the G20.

Climate Heritage Network members from around the world are contributing to a new project to support climate action in Africa through cultural heritage. The project will pilot application of the Climate Vulnerability Index for World Heritage properties in Africa (the CVI-Africa project).

Cultural heritage is both impacted by climate change and an important part of strategies for driving climate action.  So, where does the cultural heritage community stand now in terms of engaging on climate change, where do we want to go and how do we get there?  The USA’s Smithsonian Institution is putting the focus squarely on these urgent questions at a two-day symposium entitled ‘Stemming the Tide: Global Strategies for Sustaining Cultural Heritage Through Climate Change.’ The event will be held 5-6 March 2020 in Washington, DC.