Artsadmin declares a climate and ecological emergency

Artsadmin joins over 180 other arts and cultural organisations in the UK to declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency.

Artsadmin pledges to work with and support our community and local government in tackling this Emergency, and we call on others to do the same.

These are our intentions:

1. We will tell the truth

Governments, and their public broadcasters and cultural agencies, must tell the truth about the Climate and Ecological Emergency, reverse inconsistent policies and communicate the urgency for far-reaching systemic change.

We will communicate with citizens and support them to discover the truth about the Emergency and the changes that are needed.

2. We will take action

Governments must enact legally binding policy measures to reduce emissions to net zero by 2025 and to reduce consumption levels.

We pledge to work towards reducing our carbon emissions and consumption levels to sustainable levels and encourage others to do the same.

We will challenge policies and actions of local and national governments and their agencies, where we interact with them, that do not help to reduce emissions or consumption levels.

We will actively work to imagine and model ways that our organisation can regenerate the planet’s resources.

3. We are committed to justice

The emergency has arisen from deeply systemic injustices. Arts and Culture can imagine and forge shifts in the ways we relate to one another and the world, in our values and behaviours.

We will do what is possible to enable dialogue and expression amidst our communities about how the Emergency will affect them and the changes that are needed.

We will support demands for more democracy within our civic institutions and government.

We believe that all truth-telling, action and democratic work must be underpinned by a commitment to justice based on intersectional principles*, led by and for marginalised people.

Why are we declaring?

In October 2018 the world’s leading climate scientists, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that we have only 12 years to make the necessary changes to how we live that will keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C and in line with the international Paris Agreement. Beyond this point the risks of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty for hundreds of millions of people significantly worsen.

Since then there has been further evidence of climate and ecological breakdown with extreme weather events world-wide and species extinction gathering pace. Climate change is already worsening injustices faced by people in the Global South and over time it will intensify the inequalities experienced in every country, including ours.

This is an emergency that requires an urgent response from everyone at all levels of our society – to make systemic changes to policy and infrastructure but also to change the individual actions, behaviours and choices we all make.

We have only 12 years to make positive changes to how we live if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown. Business as usual is no longer an appropriate response.

Find out more about Culture Declares Emergency
Come to the free Letters to the Earth event
Read about Artsadmin’s environmental work