COP28 has delivered the most significant outcome for culture in COP history, the Climate Heritage Network (CHN) argues, commending countries (including COP28 host the United Arab Emirates) for unprecedented political commitment to engage with cultural heritage.
… adoption of the first-ever Work Plan on Culture for the UNFCCC….in 2025…
CHN writes:
Current mitigation and adaptation planning often overlook the power of culture-based climate action. The result is a global climate response that struggles to fulfil the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. Members of the CHN came to COP28 to shift this paradigm.
COP28 outcomes including 25+ nations joining the new Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action (GFCBCA) co-chaired by Brazil and the UAE, the first ever multilateral High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on Culture-based Climate Action, and strong references to cultural heritage and traditional knowledge in the newly-adopted Global Goal on Adaptation herald a new era of collaboration on culture and climate.
Unfortunately this collaboration came too late to influence COP28’s premier decision, the Global Stocktake. While the CHN applauds the historic decision to call out fossil fuels in the GST, its silence on the socio-cultural enablers of climate action leaves a ‘GST Culture Gap’ that will undermine its ability to effectively influence future climate action if not corrected.
Notwithstanding this setback, COP28 has opened wider the doors to a new era of climate action that embraces the power of culture and ancestral wisdom to help people imagine and realise low-carbon, just, climate resilient futures.
To complete the paradigm shift, CHN members will work through the Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts and Creative Industries at the Heart of Climate Action to secure a Joint Work on Culture and Climate Action decision (JWD) at COP29 next year in Baku, Azerbaijan, launching a one-year consultation on culture and climate leading designed to lead to the adoption of the first-ever Work Plan on Culture for the UNFCCC (the UN’s climate agency) in 2025 at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
The CHN pledges to partner with the Group of Friends; the UNFCCC; and the Presidencies of COP28, COP29 and COP30 to achieve these goals in order to permanently anchor attention to the socio-cultural dimension in the work of the UNFCCC while also, through the JWD process, helping to immediately fill the GST Culture Gap in order to leverage culture to achieve more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) due in 2025.
… “COP28 has proved a landmark in the global advocacy efforts to integrate culture in the climate change agenda. With the launch of the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action, we see political momentum to address the threat that climate change poses to culture and heritage, and to harness culture’s power for a faster, fairer, transition to a low carbon, just climate resilient future. Now we must build on that momentum to secure a joint work decision on culture at COP29, leading to the adoption at COP30 in Brazil of a game-changing UNFCCC work plan on culture,” said HRH Princess Dana Firas of Jordan, Co-Chair, Culture at COP28 Working Group, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
See more on the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action
See more on the Global Goal on Adaptation
See more on the Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts and Creative Industries at the Heart of Climate Action
