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Natural History Museum declares climate emergency
Museum launches strategy for tackling the planetary crisis
London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) has declared a planetary emergency and unveiled a strategy to help tackle this.
The organisation has committed to expanding its efforts to engage the public with issues related to this and will also further open up its collection and continue to share the scientific data and evidence needed to find solutions to climate instability and biodiversity loss.
“Our strategy is built around our vision of a future where people and planet thrive,” says Michael Dixon, the director of NHM. “The museum is well placed to make a difference – it is a world-leading science research centre and our 300 scientists represent one of the largest groups in the world working on natural diversity.”
The museum has announced a number of plans related to its planetary emergency strategy, such as the creation of new galleries and future-facing exhibition and events programme. This will include the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature exhibition; a children’s gallery and dinosaur gallery that will biodiversity, extinction and climate change.
NHM is also leading a new UK-wide partnership to tackle urban biodiversity loss and a transformation of the museum’s own five-acre gardens. And the museum is launching Backing Biodiversity, a year-long season of events, activities and digital content on the importance of nature and diversity.
There are also plans to expand beyond the museum’s South Kensington home to build a science and digitisation centre to safeguard and share its 80 million specimens.
And NHM said it will become the first museum in the world to set a science-based carbon reduction target in line with the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5°C global warming trajectory.