Theme: Climate Crisis

The Climate Crisis affects everything from geopolitics to economies, and from livelihoods to migration. It is the single greatest threat to our futures. Current worldwide rates of greenhouse gas emission will result in a 2-5° Celsius rise in global temperatures over the coming decades. This will have catastrophic effects on the ecosystems that sustain life. But the devastating impact of the climate crisis is already being felt acutely now. Eroding livelihoods and spurring infectious diseases, the results of climate change are already impacting communities and displacing huge numbers of people.

This theme investigates how governments, organisations and individuals can be given agency in mitigating the climate crisis by reimagining how we engage with each other and our environment and reflecting on how consumption can be decoupled from growth.

Donna Haraway points out in the book Staying with the Trouble that addressing the world’s challenges demands that we share knowledge, connect research and work collectively. How might makers, writers, artists, designers and architects come together to address the climate crisis?

This theme considers topics such as extraction of fossil fuels and use of natural resources, farming practices and global food consumption, and how measures and rhetoric that speak to the climate emergency might be decolonised. Acknowledging the interrelated nature of the world’s challenges, what does it mean to take an anti-racist approach to addressing climate change?

The teams working with this theme have investigated the potential for art, design, communication, humanities and architecture practices to respond, to engage, to mobilise and deepen awareness of the Climate Crisis.