Sustainability and climate change

We’re reducing our carbon impact, engaging our community and working in partnership to inspire action on sustainability and climate change.

Our role in safeguarding the national collection for generations to come naturally leads us to think long term about climate change. It is widely recognised that the scale of change ahead amounts to a planet-wide emergency, with devastating impacts.

We are determined to play our part in the solution. That’s why we’re reducing our carbon impact, engaging our community, and working in partnership to inspire action on sustainability and climate change.

Find out how with these resources, events and more.

Our four priorities

1. Our places: We aim to continue decarbonising our buildings and embedding best practice in environmental performance in our new spaces.
2. Our purposes: We aim to collaborate with people to open up the collection in new and interesting ways, to support work on solutions to the environmental challenges we face – from climate research to enabling sustainable business and enterprise, and engaging people through events, exhibitions and learning, to increasing climate literacy and visibility of climate science.
3. Our partnerships: We aim to embed partnerships across the sectors we work in to support wider change, share and encourage climate action, best practice and learning.
4. Embedded in our work: We aim to embed sustainability in how we work; our culture, policy, processes, governance, planning, collections and communications, ensuring it is seen not as an add-on, but as how we do everything we already do. This includes incorporating climate-related risks into our risk management, governance and conservation policies.