Three Key Questions on Culture, Cultural Heritage and Climate Change

21 THE THREE KEY QUESTIONS Individual or Collective Responsibility? The first question debated in these proceedings probed the continuum from individual to collective responsibility. It re-centred in the cultural policy context a debate raging throughout the climate change discourse which asks whether an emphasis on individual responsibility and small actions in fighting climate change can actually undermine momentum for needed, far reaching systems change. Should we, for example, be appealing to individuals to order fewer burgers or be focusing on the contemporary agri-business systems that displace traditional diets and local gastronomy with increasingly meat intensive options? The Three Key Questions debate illuminates the usefulness of culture as a lens for understanding the broader question. Cultural value orientations are an aspect of the cultural system of societies; basic values are an aspect of the personality system of individuals. Distinguishing the two makes it possible to examine influences of the normative culture of societies on the values of their members.3 The cultural lens, then, helps reveal the unhelpfulness of the personal action versus political action binary and instead asks how we can employ them together to attain a much richer understanding of human behaviour. Achieving that understanding matters. Recent climate science establishes that changes to underlying social and cultural norms, while more difficult to accomplish than transitory behavioural changes, are likely to be more durable and to support a wider range of low-carbon lifestyles.4 The debate also implicates the appropriate scope of climate action from cultural institutions. Should cultural institutions focus primarily on their own carbon footprints or something more? To my way of thinking, focusing exclusively on which lightbulbs a museum uses or whether a heritage site snack bar offers plastic straws is a cramped and selfdefeating vision of the power of culture as a societal force. At the same time, though, this type of internal action can help build institutional competence and a sense of connectedness5 – not to mention reflecting organisational integrity. Such individual action can (and should) in turn embolden and inform broader engagement by cultural institutions. The “Loss and Damage” approach With death and destruction linked to climate change mounting around the world, the issue of climate change-induced loss and damage is increasingly occupying a central role in the climate debate. Climate change is the result of centuries of industrialisation, globalisation and colonialism, processes that made rich countries rich. But its effects are

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExODM2NQ==