Written by Henry McGhie, Curating Tomorrow, henrymcghie@curatingtomorrow.co.uk.

Bio: Henry McGhie has a background as an ecologist, museum curator and manager. He set up Curating Tomorrow in 2019 to help empower museums and their partners to contribute to sustainable development agendas, including the SDGs, climate action, biodiversity conservation, Disaster Risk Reduction and human rights. He is a member of the ICOM Sustainability Working Group, and a Churchill Fellow working on these topics.

This blog post takes in some of the development over the last couple of years, and sets out some current opportunities for museums with natural history collections to strengthen their contributions to environmental sustainability.

This blog post builds on a previous post, on the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Paris Agreement. 

Museums can seem to have lots of rules – conditions for loans, environmental conditions, rules for acquisition and disposal, rules on what people can and can’t do in galleries, and so on – but what about the goals? What is the point of museums? If we look at museums from a rights-based approach (i.e. from the perspective of respecting and fulfilling human rights), we can easily see museums as related to the right to participate in cultural life, to education, to information, to take part in public affairs, freedom of expression, and more. Yet museums don’t make much of human rights or rights-based approaches. The same can be said of environmental protection and restoration. 

As I wrote in the last post, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity are both now over 30 years old, yet their main aims are not written into the work of the museum sector, or indeed the wider cultural sector. This is unfortunate on three counts: first, it holds back the international agreements from making progress to address these massive challenges; second, it denies people the opportunity to even know about these agendas and related programmes; and third it stops the museum sector from contributing effectively to achieving these agendas. 

The goals of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement (to hold average temperature rise well within 2°C, and to support effective climate adaptation), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (to conserve and restore biodiversity, promote its sustainable use, and promote fair sharing of benefits of use) could be easily written into the high-level policies and goals of the museum sector, by government or arms-length funders and regulators, but we are a long way from that, for several different reasons. 

This is not to say that museums should simply be instrumentalized – by governments, the museum sector or funders – to deliver top-down agendas (although museums are regularly instrumentalized for a variety of purposes), but to say that public spaces such as museum should be protected and should also fulfil their responsibilities to society. How? By supporting people to know about, debate, and contribute to achieving the aims of these agreements, as they wish to. Not only is this kind of activity desirable, it is part of people’s well-recognised human rights, whether written into ‘hard law’ or customary international law. How many people have heard of the Aarhus Convention, which the UK is a signatory to, protecting people’s right to access all forms of environmental information, to take part in environmental decision making and to see environmental justice? Not many, so it is hardly surprising that the right is undermined and not fulfilled when people are denied the right even to know their own rights, which is surely a role museums could be supporting more effectively than they have done previously.

The UK museum sector still considers environmental sustainability as if it is separate from broader sustainable development, as can be seen from ACE’s ‘environmental responsibility’ investment principle. Why is this a problem? Sustainable development is focused activity that achieves a more harmonious balance of environmental, social and economic considerations. It is about protecting and restoring the natural environment, empowering more people to enjoy their human rights, and sharing economic wealth more fairly. This can seem a long way from how museums, and other parts of society, work. That means we need to support positive transformations in society, but who are we – individuals, museum professionals or museums – to say what things should change to? In this sense, museums should be enablers and platforms, rather than forcing their view of the world on what people should and should not do. We have the goals from the international agreements, and we have people and communities as active agents in deciding what paths they want to take for themselves and their communities, and we have museums in the middle, providing access to information on challenges and opportunities, and opportunities for people to take part in decision making. Museums should recognize that this might involve people behaving in ways, or agreeing on things, that museums themselves (or more precisely the people who work in them) do not agree with. That, in fact, would be a very positive move. Why? The right to participate in cultural life means that people have the right to know their own culture and that of others, to take part in cultural activities, and to contribute to the cultural life of the community. If we think of most museum activity, it is heavy on the first, with rather limited opportunities for people to contribute to the cultural life of the community. 

The move to sustainable futures – considering the full gamut of social, environmental and economic considerations – will require radical thinking and creativity from all of society. The more museums can let go of the need to be the one in the driving seat, the more chance there is for others to share their ideas, concerns and aspirations. 

In an ideal world, museums would move faster to recognize that sustainable development is much more than thinking about how natural resources are used more efficiently (as is often the case with ‘sustainability’ or ‘being more sustainable’). It really is for a world where everyone experiences their human rights, together, and where nature is protected and restored: these are the twin foundations of sustainable development. There are plenty of opportunities to learn about sustainable development, and to take part by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and supporting other people to do the same. We are now half way through the period of the SDGs (2015-30) and they have very little profile in the UK, more especially in England. This is also true of the museum sector, which has yet to really get on board with them, although ICOM has adopted them as its blueprint for action towards sustainability. When we get to 2030, it would be great if museums were able to say that they did what they could, for a world with universal respect for human rights and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. If you’re looking for a practical, high-profile opportunity that gets beyond the doom-and-gloom of environment destruction, then take part in the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and help people and communities to take part locally. Share your actions and show you are supporting this great initiative.

Further reading

McGhie, HA (2019). Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals. Curating Tomorrow, https://curatingtomorrow236646048.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/museums-and-the-sustainable-development-goals-2019.pdf 

Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/ 

Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Playbook, https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/ecosystem-restoration-playbook 

UNEP (2021). Making Peace With Nature. UNEP, https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature UNEP (2021). Making Peace With Nature actions, https://bit.ly/3QLjpns