We’ve joined the United for Biodiversity coalition

Press Release

Monday 1st February, 2021

We’re very pleased to announce that Climate Museum UK has become the third UK museum member in the global coalition ‘#UnitedforBiodiversity’ and pledges to engage our communities in creative conversations about the ecological emergency. We add our voice to the Bristol Museum and the National Museum Wales, and dozens of institutions worldwide calling on world leaders to act for nature, at a time Science warns us one million species are at risk of extinction.

With this communication campaign, the European Commission is calling for stronger mobilisation in raising awareness about the need to protect biodiversity, ahead of the crucial CoP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2021.

During CoP15, the 196 Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to adopt a new global framework to protect and restore nature, as much-needed as the Paris Agreement focusing on the climate urgency. Following the Summit, the focus of the coalition for biodiversity will be on coordinated actions with tangible impact aimed at bending the curve of biodiversity loss.

“All species, from bacteria to mammals, plants to insects, are pieces of the big puzzle of life. They are all connected and depend on each other. Yet one species, our species, is now responsible for the climate crisis and the nature crisis, causing massive biodiversity loss. By destroying Earth ecosystems, we humans are jeopardizing our food, our health, our economy and our own future.”  Virginijus Sinkevičius – EU Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries

Climate Museum UK is a mobile and digital museum stirring and collecting responses to the climate and ecological emergency. Its team of creative people distributed across the UK runs a participatory programme of conversational activities, bringing in diverse voices and creativity to explore a wide range of themes beyond climate science, to focus on the lived experience and social dimensions of climate breakdown and breached planetary boundaries.

Some might assume that museums are stores of past things and about stories of past times, inappropriate for climate change as a story of now and future. But museums can be vitally alive places, where questions and meanings are debated, past interpretations challenged, connections are made, people are transformed and solutions are found.

Our six principles enable all our associates and partners to collaborate around shared language and intent, and contribute to our work being effective in mitigating and enabling people to cope with the climate and ecological emergency. These principles are:

• Being Possitopian – expanding imaginations to embrace future possibilities
• Participatory – involving people as democratically as possible
• Holistic – the environment is not a single issue; humans are nature
• Intersectional – acknowledging the intersecting factors of injustice
• Compassionate – increasing care for others
• Planet-kind – doing no harm and aiming to heal.

As an activist museum dedicated to the continuity of life, all of Climate Museum UK’s policies and practices are rooted in sustainability and planet-kindness. Our work encompasses and seeks to address all the causes of the current Earth crisis, which are systemic, interwoven, and cannot be separated.

By joining the United for Biodiversity Global Coalition we stand with organisations across the world in calling for swift and thoughtful action on biodiversity loss. We also pledge to continue and increase engagement with our communities and partner organisations on the ecological emergency, including addressing damage caused by industrial ecocide, by consumerist life-ways and by the impacts of climate breakdown. Our aim is to enable people to feel, think and take action through exploring the causes of biodiversity loss, and to develop the creative, regenerative practices needed to help our planet heal.

Notes

Climate Museum UK team members Bridget McKenzie, James Aldridge or Rebecca Leach are available for interviews to discuss our work further. Please contact us on climatemuseumuk@gmail.com or phone on 07890 540178.

More information about the United for Biodiversity Coalition can be found here. The European Commission is turning to all national parks, aquariums, botanic gardens, zoos, science and natural history museums, and research centres to join forces and raise their voice about the nature crisis.

Sample tweet:

The 3^rd museum to join the #UnitedforBiodiversity global coalition is @ClimateMuseumUK

Hashtags for sharing this news are #Biodiversity #UnitedforBiodiversity and #CoP15

Images for use on social media