The Climate Heritage Network (CHN) has announced the launch of the “Imagining Low Carbon, Just, Climate Resilient Futures Through Culture and Heritage” project, made possible by a generous $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This transformative initiative aims to leverage culture and heritage as powerful catalysts for effective climate action, empowering communities worldwide to safeguard their cultural legacies while promoting sustainable futures.
“For too long, inattention to the socio-cultural dimensions of climate action have limited the success of climate planning, policy and finance,” said Andrew Potts, the CHN’s founding coordinator. “This generous gift will help drive an urgently-needed acceleration of the work to flip this paradigm.”
Working within the context of the global climate crisis, the project focuses on frontline communities across Africa and North America.
“Across Africa and the world, historically marginalized communities who have contributed least to climate change face its most severe consequences,” says Barbra Babweteera, Executive Director of the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda. “With the help of the Mellon Foundation, CHN members aim not only to leverage more support to help these communities protect their knowledge, values, and cultures, but also to claim a leadership role in climate action.”
The Imaging Futures project will:
- Enhance culture-based climate action by improving the quality and scale of initiatives across all regions and sectors;
- Transform climate policies by integrating cultural heritage perspectives at all levels, thereby amplifying local cultural voices and enhancing the effectiveness of climate responses; and
- Support local partner communities by highlighting and promoting their innovative culture-based climate actions.
Five interconnected initiatives make up the project, each led by a different CHN member organization:
- North America Region Initiative led by the City of San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation and the Power of Preservation Foundation
- Africa Region Initiative led by The Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda
- Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA) led by the Preserving Legacies: A Future for Our Pasts project
- Decarbonizing the Built Environment Through Heritage (DBTH) led by the Built Buildings Lab with Architecture2030 and the Architecture & Urbanism Research Hub-University of Lagos
- Race to Resilience Culture (RTRC) led by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – USA and Africa
The project also includes support for the Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts, and the Creative Sector at the Heart of Climate Action campaign, which now includes over 1,000 cultural organizations and leaders around the world.
Concept development for this project was supported by a capacity-building grant from the Geneva-based ALIPH Foundation. The Mellon grant is being bolstered by additional funding, including $125,000 for HACA from the National Geographic Society’s Preserving Legacies project and $75,000 for DBTH from the 1772 Foundation. Together, these gifts amount to $1,500,000 in new funding to scale up and out culture-based climate action.
The Climate Heritage Network African Region Secretariat chaired by CCFU.
Through the project, the (CHN) Africa Region Secretariat that is chaired by the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU) will seek to create a sustainable organizational structure that bridges both Anglophone and Francophone communities, promoting collaboration and empowering African voices in climate-related discussions and projects.
For further inquiries about the Climate Heritage Network Africa secretariat and the project, please contact us at: trust@crossculturalfoundation.or.ug; ccfu@crossculturalfoundation.or.ug
To learn more, visit the project’s homepage at climateheritage.org/imagingingfutures.
About the Climate Heritage Network
The Climate Heritage Network (CHN) is a voluntary, mutual support network of government agencies, NGOs, universities, businesses, and other organizations committed to tackling climate change and achieving the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.
CHN partners aim to unlock the power of culture and heritage to drive transformative climate action, both to urgently bolster a system of climate change response that is currently struggling and to enhance the capacity of communities to safeguard their cultures and heritage. For more information, visit climateheritage.org.
