Culture: The Missing Link to Climate Action Summary Report

The latest international research by Julie’s Bicycle – Culture: The Missing Link to Climate Action – is the result of collaborative working with partners across the world.

This research combines data that analyses publicly available national arts policies of 25 ODA countries, a survey to arts and culture bodies with a national mandate and cultural ministries, as well as in-depth roundtables and interviews with leading international arts leaders.

This research builds on a similar study in 2015 by Julie’s Bicycle and the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), conducted just before the COP21 United Nations Climate Conference held in Paris. In the intervening seven years of mounting environmental crisis, this research finds that national policies for culture and the arts generally are still not yet aligned to climate science, nor to national commitments under the Paris Agreement. The research considers how cultural policy can strengthen the creative climate movement, and thereby mobilise action at scale.

It concludes that the cultural community no longer needs to be sensitised to the environmental emergency; they need the policy frameworks and authority, funding and accountability to be fully mainstreamed into national environmental planning. Cultural ambition everywhere is high, solutions abound, and creativity is in abundant supply. An urgent and overdue policy dialogue with national policymakers, which supports the expertise already happening, is the missing link.