ABSTRACT
The understanding of effective climate change communication between cultural institutions and their publics has advanced rapidly through the 2010s, improving understanding of practice and the role of these institutions in society. Current work in cultural institutions like science centers, zoos and aquariums, and public gardens is improving our understanding of which public engagement practices empower individuals to adopt specific climate action and overall behaviours that care for the planet.
Despite the potential, authority, and capacity to engage their publics with the existential crises of our time, the sector fails to live up to its promise. Some museums are taking action through carbon accounting; reducing emissions through operational energy efficiencies and materials and food consumption and disposal; reducing the carbon costs of travel for collections, staff, and visitors; and developing topical exhibitions and public programs. Only recently has this work begun to move beyond the early adopters or those responding to funder or regulatory mandates. Where this work has mostly been restricted to zoos, aquariums, and nature-focused museums, art and history museums are beginning to see paths to action and to engagement. These early adopters recognized that they could not, and now their peers cannot, avoid the climate crisis as it devastates the world they seek to interpret. The response is slow, but the authors report on the innovations that these cultural sector institutions have developed to illustrate pathways that can easily be adopted by the entire museum sector as it works to catch up. They call for a much stronger commitment to advancing the science and practice of climate communication in museums. They do so because they affirm that the role of any museum or library should be the use of material and ephemeral culture to help users find opportunity to contribute to a better future. The authors illustrate how concepts of shared values and identity are the most powerful tools for driving climate empowerment at any scale.
