Tag Archives: climate change

The Green Deal and Digital Agenda: Opportunities for Libraries

In the last month, the European Commission has launched two flagship initiatives which look set to focus much of the attention of its President, Ursula von der Leyen, in the coming years.

Delivering on broader commitments, notably to the SDGs, they offer a more concrete and targeted response to two key trends – the growing role of digital technology in all parts of our lives, and climate change.

Each initiative – the European Green Deal and Shaping Europe’s Digital Future – includes a set of proposals and actions, aiming to place the region in a position of strength, while acting to safeguard lives, livelihoods, and values.

Given the role that these two documents are likely to have, it is worth already looking at what they mean for libraries, and where there may be value in pushing for more acknowledgement of the role that libraries can play in achieving their goals.

 

The European Green Deal

The first of the two documents to appear was the European Green Deal.

Ever since her nomination as President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen has highlighted her commitment to action around climate change.

In this document, she sets out a path forward on this. As can be expected, this covers policy action in areas which are traditionally associated with climate change (emissions reduction, green energy, circular economy, energy efficiency, clean transport, environmentally-friendly food chains, protection of biodiversity and reducing pollution).

However, it also calls for sustainability to be mainstreamed into wider EU and national policies, and in turn for other priorities such as equality and growth are also integrated into climate action.

 

So what does this mean for libraries?

Already, the importance of information is recognised, both at the individual level in helping individuals take specific decisions between products, and at a continent-wide level in supporting research and data sharing. Libraries are a key part of the information infrastructure of any country, and so have a key role to play in success.

But there is also strong potential for libraries in references to the need for building awareness and motivation to act more broadly. Many libraries are already engaged in sustainability education, providing an excellent community space for building awareness of the need for change.

The Green Deal already refers to how schools and universities do this, but if we are to reach entire populations – for example to hold the citizen dialogues promised by the Green Deal, libraries must also be included.

Libraries are – furthermore – excellent candidates for efforts to promote renovation and refurbishment. As public spaces, they can act as models for communities of what is possible, building awareness more broadly.

Finally, it is to be hoped that as the implementation of the Green Deal moves forwards, there will be recognition of the role of culture and heritage in climate action. For more, see the work of the Climate Heritage Network, and IFLA’s own exploration of how libraries contribute to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

 

Shaping Europe’s Digital Future

The second major policy document focuses on the different questions raised by the growing role of digital technology in our economies, societies and democracies.

While the previous Commission already saw scattered actions around particular aspects of digital – copyright and terrorist content for example – Shaping Europe’s Digital Future aims to set out a more comprehensive roadmap.

It does this by looking in turn at the individual level (ensuring that everyone has the connectivity and skills they need to make the best of the internet), markets (promoting competition, innovation and consumer rights) and civic life (freedom of speech, diversity of content, and the fight against crime).

The Agenda also underlines the international dimension, both in terms of setting rules and supporting digital development. While this remains to be defined, the whole Agenda is defined by a desire to find a European approach to the internet, and to maintain the possibility to enforce this.

What’s the library angle?

The most obvious is the strong focus on digital skills. With over seven million adults a year in Europe accessing the internet for the first time in libraries, and many more taking part in training activities, this is an area where libraries have a proven potential to contribute. The current consultation on the Digital Education Action Plan – one of the actions foreseen in document – offers an opportunity to highlight this point.

There are further opportunities however. The growing recognition that Europeans need high quality connectivity to the internet can start with libraries. Support through programmes such as WiFi4EU should not limit themselves to lower speed connections. In turn, this allows libraries to become hubs for small businesses, researchers and innovators.

The promise of further efforts to protect privacy and ensure individual rights online is also welcome, but it will be important to take care that such efforts do not in fact just reinforce the position of existing major players, or cause unintended harm to libraries and their users.

One way to ensure this is to use the potential of libraries to help empower people more broadly, not only through media literacy, but through raising awareness of everyone’s rights.

Clearly, these ideas should also form a pillar of the work the EU does in its neighbourhood and globally, ensuring that more people have libraries which can act as hubs for connectivity and skills, in line with the objectives of the agenda.

 

We are at an early stage in the current Commission’s term, but in these two areas, the potential for libraries to contribute – if properly engaged – is clear. We look forward to working further with the European authorities to make this happen.

Culture, Community and (Social) Capital: The Role of Libraries

The work of Eric Klinenberg on the role of libraries as social infrastructure has received a lot of attention in the library world.

Based on his research among residents of New York, he heard countless stories of people whose lives had been changed – improved – through the time they had spent in libraries, through their contact with librarians.

His arguments are based strongly on the idea of social capital – the connections between people that allow them to work together more effectively.

In making this link between libraries and social capital, Klinenberg brings our institutions into a space where those interested in museums and sites have long been active – the connection between cultural institutions and places and community well-being (for example here).

A day after World Habitat Day, in the European Week of Regions and Cities, and ahead of the launch of the Climate Heritage Network, this blog looks further at this connection, and in particular the challenges it faces.

 

Social Capital

As highlighted, the notion of social capital, in broad terms, is about connections between people. These connections can be based on norms and values – specific beliefs as to what is acceptable or not, and a sense of what is important.

In turn, these norms and values allow people to develop trust, building cooperation and saving time and effort. In times of hardship, it can allow for greater resilience and quicker recovery.

Of course the links in question are not always universal. In talking about social capital, there is talk of bonds and bridges. Bonds are what connect people within a group, and bridges are what connects people in one group with those in another.

Too much focus on links within a single group can be unhealthy, and lead to some being excluded. In order to build the widest possible sense of community, there is a need not only to support internal connectedness, but to provide opportunities to build bridges.

In ensuring both of these, both knowledge and spaces have a role to play. This understanding is already at the heart of reflection on how museums and other heritage sites contribute – through providing common reference points, as well as a space where people can come together.

As Klinenberg’s work points out, this is just as true for libraries.

 

Communities and Climate Change

All sorts of challenges can test the resilience of communities. Economic change, dramatic policy shifts and conflict all force changes to daily life and require adaptation.

Climate change will certainly lead to many such situations, as groups face extreme weather events, need to adopt new ways of living, or even need to abandon villages, towns and cities.

These shifts can be traumatic. Changing habits, structures and economic models may affect the norms and values that underpin social capital.

At worst, the heritage – the buildings and objects which offer a physical reference point, the documents and ideas that offer a mental one, and the spaces that enable interaction – are at risk of being lost.

The consequence of this can be to reduce social capital, both within groups, and between them, at a time when it is needed most. It can make recovery and adaptation slower and longer, if it happens at all.

At best, just as in the cases identified by Klinenberg in his own work in New York, libraries can offer both the space and the substance necessary for building social capital, even in situations of hardship, and so making communities more resilient.

The explicitly public focus of libraries – and their ability to reach out to people who may not identify with other cultural institutions – mean that they have a potentially highly important contribution.

 

It is helpful to see potential for a convergence in the work done by libraries and museums and other heritage institutions on where – and how – they can build social capital.

Given the respective strengths of each, there is also strong scope not just for connections within our sectors, but also across them. In the face of climate change, the chances are that this will be more and more necessary.

Not Victims but Vectors of Change: Libraries, Climate Action and Peace

Climate change, if left untackled, risks not only being felt in an an ever-more-frequent series of extreme weather events, but also in a growing pressure on our socieites.

These pressures – less land, fewer resources, higher migration – have in the past been the cause of conflict. Without action, there is a justifiable fear that this could happen again.

As the United Nations Secretary-General sets out in his introduction to this year’s International Day of Peace, this is why it is important to address climate change in order to increase the chances of peace.

For libraries, both conflict and climate change can all too easily be seen as externalities – things that happen to our institutions without any possibility to respond. It is certainly true that it is hard to forget images of roofs blown off – by winds or bombs – and collections waterlogged or burnt.

However, libraries are far from powerless. For the reasons set out in this blog, they are not victims, but rather vectors of progress, helping to tackle climate change, and so preserve peace.

 

Better Prepared: Supporting the Reseach that Saves Lives

Clearly a core role of libraries is to support the production of, and access to, research. It is only thanks to the possibilty for experts to draw on evidence from the past, and to work together, that we have the understanding we have today of climate change and its impacts.

Libraries have of course done this for centuries, making it possible for scientists to take the work of those who have gone before, and go further. This has happened at a giant scale in climate science.

There is also a realisation that a complete understanding of climate change will also rely on bringing research in different disciplines together. Knowing what is going on is not just a question of meteorology, environmental science or any other single field, but will require insights from many different areas.

Libraries are already looking to do this, for example through their support to public health, or in realising the potential of old travel reports and maps in showing how our world is being altered over time. Open access will facilitate this significantly, as highlighted in the UN Global Sustainable Development Report.

Through this work, governments are better able to see what action is needed in order to relieve or reduce the pressures that can lead to conflict.

 

Behaviour Change, not Climate Change

Of course the fact that governments know they should be doing something does not mean that they will do it. A key means of ensuring that they do – as well as of reducing the factors that can drive unrest within communities – is by acting at the local level also.

Libraries have a key role to play here also. As set out in IFLA’s paper on libraries and sustainability, two key roles of libraries are as examples and educators, building understanding of the issues among citizens, and helping them to learn how to change their own behaviour.

This can be a key trigger, and support, for government action. Meanwhile, the support the libraries provide for the development of new technologies and new ideas will feed into the creation of new businesses and new jobs in future, as well as offering new ways of carrying out more traditional professions – such as farming – in a changed world.

This complements other work that libraries carry out to create a culture of peace, as highlighted in our previous work in this area in 2017 and 2018.

 

Libraries, therefore, are far from powerless faced with climate change and conflict. Instead, through acting on the one, they have a real contribution to make to efforts to reduce both, and in doing so, to build a more peaceful, more sustainable world.