KEA and the British Council marked the launch of Culture-Based Climate Action: Mapping the global evidence from COP26 to COP30 with two webinars on 28 October 2026. Both sessions can now be watched online ▶ Culture-Based Climate Action: Mapping the global evidence from COP26 to COP30 | British Council

Practitioners, artists, policymakers and cultural leaders met online to discuss what the report found and to share examples from their own work. The conversations covered creative climate action, Indigenous and local knowledge, heritage resilience, policy, financing and community-led approaches. In the first session, Jen Rae, Emmanuelle Robert and Barbra Babweteera spoke about their work. In the second, Samuel Rubin, Aparna Tandon and Alison Tickell did the same. Together, they showed what culture-based climate action looks like in practice.

Culture as a driver of climate action

Since COP26, culture has become much more visible in climate policy and practice. It used to be seen mainly as a sector harmed by climate change. Now it is increasingly recognised as something that helps fight it, through mitigation, adaptation, resilience and wider change in society. This shift reflects a simple idea: climate change is not only a technical or economic problem, but a cultural one too. It is shaped by values, behaviours, knowledge systems and how people imagine the future.

The report maps culture-based climate action worldwide from COP26 in 2021 to COP30 in 2025. It looks at six areas: creative engagement, heritage protection, Indigenous and community-based adaptation, international networks and partnerships, sustainability within the cultural sector itself, and the systems used to measure impact.

What the evidence shows

The picture that emerges is one of real progress. Creative projects build awareness, emotional engagement and public participation at scale. They lead to lasting change when wider policy supports them. Heritage has quickly become part of climate governance. At COP30, cultural heritage was named as a standalone adaptation target under the Global Goal on Adaptation. Indigenous and local knowledge is among the most effective forms of place-based climate action, yet communities still struggle to access finance and a voice in decision-making. Networks and partnerships help good practice travel across borders. The cultural sector, especially in Europe, has also moved quickly to reduce its own environmental footprint.

Important gaps remain, however. The evidence is strongest on awareness and emotional engagement, and weakest on long-term changes in behaviour and institutions. Recognition in policy has not yet turned into sustained climate finance. Intangible heritage gets less attention than buildings and monuments. Gender and intersectionality are rarely built into how projects are designed or measured. And most of the evidence comes from Europe and parts of Latin America, with far less from South Asia, the Sahel, the Pacific and Central Africa.

Looking ahead to 2030

To close these gaps, the report sets out seven priority recommendations for the cultural field. It calls for a move away from short project cycles towards long-term cultural infrastructure, and for dedicated, accessible climate finance for culture. It also argues for shared ways of measuring impact that climate policymakers can recognise, and for cultural rights as the foundation of this work. It urges more dialogue between the cultural and climate sectors, and a stronger, more permanent place for culture at the COPs. Above all, it argues that creative imagination should not be an add-on to climate action. Instead, it should be built into climate action from the start, because imagining a different future is often what turns awareness into action.