BLACK PEARL, the cultural organisation founded by Samata Pattinson, today announces its contribution to the first Culture Global Stocktake for Climate Action, a policy tool designed to do one thing: embed culture into climate decision-making.
The global policy tool, shaped through open consultation with cultural practitioners, Indigenous leaders, creatives, researchers and policymakers, sets out how culture can be written into climate decision-making. The stocktake has been built through open consultation with artists, knowledge holders, researchers, organisations and communities across every region. It is the first attempt to assess, in the language of the climate negotiations, what culture contributes to climate action, what it costs, and what it needs. Its central ask is that culture be recognised as a driver of climate action and written into the Second Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement, with final outcomes due at COP33 in 2028.
BLACK PEARL joined cultural practitioners, Indigenous leaders, creatives, researchers and policymakers to co-create the first draft of the stocktake, bringing its work across fashion, music, entertainment and education into the process. The current draft spans mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity-building, loss and damage, and just transition, and closes with a call for a formal Joint Work on culture and climate under the UNFCCC.
BLACK PEARL’s Samata Pattinson, sits alongside a wide group of contributors. Individuals who submitted written inputs to the first draft include climate activist Vanessa Nakate, artist Favianna Rodriguez, producer Lydia Dean Pilcher, Tori Tsui, Alice Audouin, Andrew Potts, Lucy Neal, Marcele Oliveira and Dr Jen Rae of the Centre for Reworlding, who designed the stocktake’s cultural ecosystem framework. Organisations engaged in the process include the British Council, the Ministry of Culture of Brazil, the United Nations World Food Programme, Climate Heritage Network, Julie’s Bicycle, Creatives for Climate, Doc Society, Gallery Climate Coalition, Purpose, the Fossil Fuel Treaty and the University of Toronto, together with youth networks, farmers’ associations and grassroots groups across Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Hundreds more have taken part in virtual and in-person consultations.
“For too long, the climate conversation has told people what to fear. Culture tells them what to want,” said Samata Pattinson, CEO and Founder of BLACK PEARL. “If we want change that holds, it has to feel like belonging rather than sacrifice. This stocktake is a chance to make that the starting point.”
Among its recommendations, the stocktake calls for culture to be recognised in the Second Global Stocktake and as a standalone goal in development frameworks beyond 2030; dedicated climate finance windows and direct access for cultural practitioners and communities, including grassroots movements; an end to fossil fuel sponsorship and investment across cultural institutions, and a shift in advertising and media away from fossil fuel expansion; shared methods for measuring emissions across production, touring, venues and digital infrastructure; recognition of cultural loss and damage, including languages, rituals, sacred landscapes and ancestral land, even where it cannot be priced; and a sector-wide charter for entertainment and culture, with recognition of the cultural ecosystem as a stakeholder community in its own right.
The stocktake describes itself as a living process, to be reviewed and strengthened as the work moves on. It is available in English and Turkish at www.cultureglobalstocktake.com, with further language versions to follow. Whether read in full or through its executive summary, it is an essential policy tool for anyone working where culture and climate meet.
