Transmitting the Signals: Culture’s essential role in climate policy
Written by Maya Weisinger. This piece was originally published on the EMCCINNO website.
When plants are under attack they release volatile organic compounds into the air, triggering defence responses in nearby plants. Neighbouring plants that have not yet been threatened “eavesdrop” on these airborne warnings and proactively bolster their resilience.
For example, tomato plants attacked by caterpillars release signals that prompt neighbouring tomato plants to create a compound that protects them from future attacks. Or when sagebrush is damaged or cut, it releases airborne signals that prime other species of plants nearby to boost their defenses. Beneath the soil of a forest floor, mycorrhizal networks are formed and connect roots across species. These networks do not only move nutrients but also transmit defense signals and “infochemicals” between plants, carrying early-warning signals that create an ecosystem-level defence.
The climate crisis is seeing signals flaring up all across the globe, with Europe being no exception. As of 26 August 2025, the European Commission’s wildfire monitoring reports ~1.02 million hectares have burned across the EU since the beginning of the year. Last year in the same period the area burnt was 222,132 hectares, in addition to the fact that now 70% of EU soils have been deemed unhealthy, a crucial factor in this rise. A 300-year tree-ring oxygen-isotope reconstruction from Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that late-20th- and early-21st-century drought in southern Europe is unprecedented in severity and frequency. Tree tissues are literally archiving the region’s shift to aridity. Ecosystems themselves are signalling distress in scorched rings of wood, in parched soils, in altered flowering patterns. Like plants warning neighbours of an insect attack, these ecosystems are warning us to adapt or collapse.
Climate change does not only create ecological signals, but also sends intense social warnings as well. Rising sea levels, intensifying droughts like mentioned above, and collapsing ecosystems are already reshaping how people live and move. According to the World Bank’s Groundswell project, over 216 million people could be internally displaced by 2050 because of climate impacts. And these signals do not impact equally: According to Oxfam, “people in low-and lower-middle-income countries are around five times more likely than people in high-income countries to be displaced by sudden extreme weather disasters; and long standing gender, racial and economic inequalities mean that historically marginalized communities are the hardest hit and most impacted by the climate crisis.”
So not only do plants and ecosystems play a role in ringing alarms bells about the climate crisis. And culture has an important role in amplifying those signals, including spotlighting voices that are often left out, sharing stories of resilience and adaptation and connecting local and hyper-local strategies for survival into broader justice and policy frameworks.
Policy frameworks: are we listening?
The EU laid its foundations for climate policy in the 1990s, when it joined the Kyoto Protocol and began setting collective targets for emissions reductions. The 2008 Climate and Energy Package introduced the “20-20-20” targets for 2020, marking the first time the Union committed to a coordinated climate strategy. The Paris Agreement in 2015 created a renewed political mandate, but an acceleration in climate policy came in 2019 with the launch of the European Green Deal, which framed climate neutrality by 2050 as Europe’s new “growth strategy.” This was followed by the Fit for 55 package (2021), legally binding a 55% cut in emissions by 2030, and, most recently, the proposal for a 2040 target of 90% reductions, now under negotiation.
Yet this momentum faces significant threats. Political backlash is growing across Member States, with far-right and populist parties portraying climate measures as elitist or unaffordable. Farmers’ protests against emissions standards and regulations on fertilisers have put pressure on the Commission to soften or delay aspects of the Green Deal.
And, in fact, the von der Leyen Commission has seemingly deprioritised the climate agenda in its second term, enacting policies that favour economic and industrial competitiveness. With its “simplification agenda,” the Commission is aiming to cut regulatory burdens for business, which critics argue undermine Green Deal commitments. Key initiatives such as the Green Claims Directive have been put on hold due to political backlash, while the focus pivots to priorities around defense and competitiveness.
Economic volatility, especially the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has led some governments to reopen coal plants or invest in new fossil infrastructure, actions that undermine climate credibility. Added to this are the persistent pressures of corporate lobbying, especially from fossil fuels, aviation, and agribusiness, which influence negotiations and dilute ambition. And as consensus across 27 diverse states is at the core of EU policymaking, this also means that measures are often watered down to secure political agreement or not reached at all.
Effectively, institutions are also sending their own signals that climate ambitions are negotiable in times or incredible urgency.
The cultural ecosystem’s response
Despite these barriers, civil society and the cultural sector have consistently expanded the space for climate ambition. Youth-led movements like Fridays for Future brought climate urgency into the political mainstream and helped create the atmosphere in which the Green Deal was possible. And across the Culture Action Europe network, organisations are developing resources, tools and knowledge that bring visibility to cultural sector’s integral role in the climate movement.
IETM (International network for contemporary performing arts) hosts its Green School, a training program offering members inspiration, practical tools, and peer exchange related to eco-creativity, climate justice, green production, and sustainable practice. The European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC) has been working on a framework project, “JuST: Socio-cultural Centres for Just Sustainability Transitions” which focuses on how socio-cultural centres serve as vibrant hubs where culture, community, and sustainability converge. ProProgressione, based in Budapest, leads projects like The Big Green and its Green Academy , to name a few, experimenting with interdisciplinary practice and artist-led sustainability education which integrates environmental engagement, soil restoration, and inclusive leadership in the arts. ELIA (the European League of Institutes of the Arts) has also developed their “Arts & Ecology” working group to focus on mitigation and adaptation strategies within higher arts education institutions, while also joining the Climate Truth Crisis project to combat climate disinformation.
Cultural networks are also banding together to co-create sustainability standards tailored to the creative field and embed sustainability into their own practice and policy. In the case of the SHIFT project, 16 cultural networks, including Culture Action Europe, have developed collective guidelines and tools to help cultural organisations integrate ecological and social sustainability into their operations. Among its key outcomes was the piloting of an eco-certification model specifically adapted to the cultural field, alongside open-access resources on leadership, environmental responsibility, inclusion, and equity. SHIFT has also demonstrated that collaboration itself is an important aspect of sustainability practices: by pooling expertise and sharing learning across networks, the project created a strong transnational alliance of cultural actors working toward a common ecological transition.
At a global level, cultural networks have also been very involved in coalition building and advocacy. The Climate Heritage Network is a coalition that brings together heritage institutions, NGOs, and arts organisations to call on culture to be central to climate strategies by promoting tools and resources for culture-based climate action, such as reusing buildings, embedding culture into climate planning, and mobilising diverse voices at forums like COP27. They “seek to scale up culture-based climate action and to make climate policy people-centred through coordination and cooperation among its members.”
Cultural networks have also been uniting to advocate for the role of culture in sustainable development by collectively campaigning for a #Culture2030Goal which calls for a dedicated Culture Goal in the post-2030 UN Sustainable Development Agenda, in which culture’s explicit mention is currently absent. The Cultural Goal emphasizes the central role of cultural rights while also calling for stronger protection of both tangible and intangible heritage, including traditions endangered by climate impacts. At the same time, it insists on the importance of nurturing creative ecosystems by safeguarding fair working conditions for cultural professionals, and it highlights the role of cultural diplomacy in peacebuilding and cross-border collaboration. Together, these priorities outline a vision of culture not as an accessory to sustainable development, but as one of its structural pillars.
And then, initiatives such as EMCCINNO are essential for the facilitation of the necessary cultural shifts in how societies imagine, organise, and enact the climate transition. Cultural and artistic social enterprises are uniquely placed to bridge ecological realities with social needs. Unlike traditional policy or market-driven approaches, these enterprises combine democratic governance, artistic experimentation, and anchor deeply in community.
Through EMCCINNO’s five transformation sites, from BeTime in rural Andalusia experimenting with regenerative agroforestry and water restoration, to La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille exploring ecological redirection and collective transformation through artistic energy and civic engagement, to Jazz ao Centro Clube in Coimbra embedding community arts into the climate transition through improvisation, jazz, and collective experimentation and participatory democracy, to KÖME-Association of Cultural Heritage Managers in Budapest using cultural heritage to reimagine cultural institutions as agents of ecological and social transition, and ZK/U– Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin blending art and city-making to grow urban imaginaries through grassroots action, the project shows that climate policy must not only focus on things like cutting emissions, but must also listen and build from the lived experiences of communities. EMCCINNO’s transformation sites demonstrate how inclusive, co-created practices that are rooted in place, memory, and creativity can feed into more just policies. Rather than imposing models with top-down approaches, communities themselves actively cultivate new ways of thinking and building that help communities adapt, resist, and reimagine their futures. Artistic and cultural approaches are therefore not peripheral to advocacy. They provide the practices and governance innovations that make ambitious climate action socially grounded and politically viable.
In the same way that plants do not remain silent when in distress, societies everywhere are sending the signals. Are we listening to them? Europe’s climate transition not only relies on our ability to internally build cultural and civic response, but to also recognise our place in a global root system. It depends on cooperation, listening, and multilateral frameworks that recognise our interdependence. In the same way that ecosystems survive by organising themselves collectively, we must also act to spread warnings, redistribute resources, and nurture resilience across borders. Culture is the connective tissue that allows us to really hear these signals and make sure our actions are not only ecological, but deeply just.