Reading recommendation for International Museum Day: Ecomuseums and Climate Change

This year's International Museum Day, held on 18 May, will focus on sustainability and wellbeing. As the International Council of Museums (ICOM) says, all museums have a role to play in shaping and creating sustainable futures, and they can do this through educational programmes, exhibitions, community outreach and research.

With this in mind, this International Museum Day, we are highlighting a new book from LediPublishing in Italy: “Ecomuseums and Climate Change”, a collection of essays on the role museums can play in the debate on the climate crisis and the ways they can promote local action. 

The publication is the result of the online conference held on 30 September 2021 with the title “Ecomuseums and Climate Action,” which attracted more than 100 participants from countries whose communities are facing these problems. 

The book presents the results of this conference where heritage experts, community activists, curators, politicians and academics from several countries, explored how ecomuseums and community museums are acting as catalysts for transition, renewal, and sustainable development and how they might effectively contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and climate action. 

How can these organisations best contribute to the debate about the climate crisis and promote local action? Central to those actions are encouraging local people to recognise how important their cultural, natural and intangible cultural heritage is in making places special and giving a sense of belonging, why that heritage should be sustained, and how heritage assets can be used to promote climate action. 

This book – with its collection of essays from around the world – demonstrates how small local actions, considered together, can have a dramatic and far-reaching impact. It will be of interest to those working in climate action, heritage and museum studies, and environmental issues.

Download Ecomuseums and Climate Change