Disseminating Climate Change: The Role of Museums in Activating the Global Public

Abstract

In the task of ensuring that governments undertake the measures needed to mitigate the impacts of global warming today and in the future, it is necessary to activate the public worldwide to a much greater degree than has been the case over the last 25 years. The IPCC have published five reports providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change. Each summarized for policymakers and the press, to facilitate communication to the public. Given the inertia that characterizes the public’s response, it is legitimate to ask if sufficient emphasis has been placed on the means of communication. Whether, in activating the public, where communication takes place and how it is achieved is of equally importance to what is communicated. Museums as institutions have a number of characteristics, individually and collectively, that offer a unique possibility of disseminating both the local impacts of climate change and placing them in the wider context of the international nature of global warming. Examining storytelling as a means of activating local communities, the paper describes a museum project being developed in the Norwegian arctic and a burgeoning international initiative from museum professionals on three continents that aims to bridge the local global gap. The IPCC report for 2018 offers a window of opportunity to activate the global community. The paper concludes by outlining a possible scenario to achieve this, whereby the museum sector, offering both local museums as arenas for dialogue together with an international infrastructure for global communication, could play a significant role.