The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines climate change as “A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.”*

The New England region is experiencing more extreme weather due to the effects of rising global temperatures, which has a direct impact on cultural institutions across the Commonwealth. Below are resources to help mitigate the impacts of climate change to our collections, buildings and infrastructure, and landscapes.

 Sarah Sutton | Cultural Heritage & Climate Change: Disaster Planning, Adaptation, and Resilience from 2021 virtual HEART week
  • COSTEP MA Resilience Symposium for Cultural Institutions resources
  • American Alliance of Museums Environment & Climate Network resources
  • American Institute for Conservation Sustainable Practices – Wiki (conservation-wiki.com)
  • American Library Association Sustainability Roundtable resources
  • American Zoo Association Resources for Greening Business Practices
  • Boston Green Ribbon Commission Cultural Institutions Working Group general information and resources
    • The Boston Green Ribbon Commission is working to accelerate the implementation of the City’s Climate Action Plan by convening, organizing, and enabling leaders from Boston’s key sectors. The Cultural Institutions Working Group is a subset of the commission that is made of a wide variety of arts, sports, nature-based, historic, and entertainment organizations. The commission sponsors collaborative Climate Action Planning where you learn and work alongside your peers and consultants to develop your own institutional plan.
  • Climate Change Conversations in Libraries (C3L) resources
  • Climate Heritage Network
  • National Park Service Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy
    • The National Park Service’s Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy sets out a vision and broad approach for managing impacts to and learning from cultural resources under modern climate change. This website provides links to different planning documents and resources.
  • Society of American Archivists (SAA) Climate Change Resources for Archivists
  • Society of American Archivists (SAA) Crisis, Disaster, and Tragedy Response Working Group
  • Massachusetts Climate Clearinghouse
    • The Massachusetts Climate Change Clearinghouse (resilient MA) is a gateway to data and information relevant to climate change adaptation and mitigation across the Commonwealth. It provides local climate change science and decision support tools for the Commonwealth to support decision making that enhances climate resilience for local planners, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public.
  • Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program
    • The MVP program from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) works with communities across the state to identify climate hazards, assess vulnerabilities, and develop and implement action plans to improve resilience to climate change.
  • Massachusetts statewide Climate Change Assessment
    • The MA Climate Change Assessment is a statewide analysis detailing how Massachusetts people, environments, and infrastructure may be affected by climate change and related hazards through the end of the century. This assessment will directly inform the first five-year update to the State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan (SHMCAP) that will be released in Fall 2023.
  • Massachusetts Decarbonization Roadmap
    • As part of the State of Massachusetts’s efforts to become carbon neutral by 2050, this website has links to various planning and research projects initiated by the state as part of their development of the roadmap.
  • National Council on Public History (NCPH) History@Work Climate Emergency blog series
  • Structure, People, and Relationships: A Multidimensional Method to Assess Museum Resilience
  • New England Museum Association (NEMA): Culture Over Carbon
    • Culture Over Carbon is a grant-funded initiative developed to improve the museum field’s understanding of energy use by examining data from five types of museums, and zoos and aquariums, gardens, and historic sites. The ability to participate in the program is no longer positive but the results, which will break down energy usage by type of institution, will be published sometime in the near future.
  • Communicating Climate Change: A Practitioner’s Guide
  • Preservation Massachusetts Climate Change and Resiliency Webinar and Resource Guide
    • With a focus on historic properties this website has a link to a webinar on the subject, access to the slide deck from the webinar, and an additional document filled with resources that might be of interest to a steward of a historic property.
  • Resources developed by municipalities:
  • Theatre Green Book
  • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution report: Understanding Sea Level Rise (2021)
  • Fourth National Climate Assessment
    • The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) delivers the National Climate Assessment (NCA) to Congress and the President no less than every four years that analyzes the effects of climate change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity. The report consists of two volumes: the foundational science is described in Volume I, the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) and Volume II focuses on observed and projected risks, impacts, consideration of risk reduction, implications under different mitigation pathways, and trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years.

*IPCC, 2012: Glossary of terms. In: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation [Field, C.B., V. Barros, T.F. Stocker, D. Qin, D.J. Dokken, K.L. Ebi, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, G.-K. Plattner, S.K. Allen, M. Tignor, and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY, USA, pp. 555-564.