‘‘ I
I believe that libraries have always been built around the principles of sharing, accountability and equity...
President’s View
Sustainability at the CILIP Cymru Wales Conference
WAS asked to open the CILIP Cymru Wales Conference in May by talking about Sustainability, supporting the conference theme: “Possible
futures: sustainable, collaborative, progressive”. For me, this theme really captures the spirit of our profession as we look ahead to life after the challenges of the last few years and so I thought I’d use this column to share some of the work going on across the CILIP Community to position librarians, information and knowledge professionals at the heart of conversations about Sustainability, the Environment and Climate. “We Are CILIP” defines the four main strategic contexts that will shape our profession in the next five years: Sustainability, Digital Transformation, Equity and Social Justice and Leadership. All these are inter-related. Our work on Sustainability must be driven by a clear focus on Equity and a ‘Just Transition’ to Net Zero and our Digital work can help reduce our environmental impact. In all these areas, we need to move from responding to other peoples’ priorities to demonstrating leadership for our users, communities and institutions. But how to start? To shape a collaborative approach we should first develop a common understanding of what ‘Sustainability’ means and how we are uniquely placed to contribute to it. There are lots of words and expressions, but they are all part of the same concept: that our future is inextricably linked to the future of our planet. We need to do better for the natural environment, which includes doing better for people. The conversation is moving away from a focus on the negative – the threat of Climate Crisis – and towards a focus on the positive outcomes. We’ve rightly seen a lot of organisations focus
June 2022
on Carbon-counting and Net Zero and we hope this will continue, but we are also seeing an increased emphasis on harder to measure ‘soft’ outcomes such as equity, fairness and accountability. So what does this mean for our work? I believe that libraries have always been built around the principles of sharing, accountability and equity that are so fundamental to true sustainability and the sustainability agenda is a natural fit for our profession. Our work will provide practical support in reducing the impact of books, physical assets, premises and vehicles, but this is also about re-stating some fundamental library values. Values like trust, universal equality, access to information, evidence-based decision- making, a fairer and more equitable economy and, right at its heart, a focus on people and community. Sustainability is an opportunity for us to provide leadership to help our organisations become more sustainable and this feels like a very ‘naturally library’ agenda. To make the most of this opportunity, CILIP are launching a range of initiatives focused on placing librarians, information and knowledge professionals at the heart of evidence-based responses to Climate Change and Climate Action. You may have heard about the Green Libraries Partnership? It aims to strengthen sustainability practice in UK libraries and to fund innovative projects to enable our services to reduce their environmental impact, working with others to raise awareness of Climate Change, focusing on “working together for people and planet”. The Green Libraries1
aim is
to create a thriving UK community of practice to develop new ideas and approaches. Thanks to a generous investment from the Arts Council England, CILIP are launching a Grant Fund to offer pilot grants to libraries to
Kate Robinson (
president@cilip.org.uk) is President of CILIP.
www.cilip.org.uk/
INSIGHT
undertake projects that will improve their sustainability, with an ambition is to grow this into a large-scale fund in partnership with others. Our colleagues at CILIP in Scotland launched a pioneering initiative under the banner of #CILIPSGoGreen in 2021, highlighting the tremendous contribution of libraries to the COP26 agendas of climate action and Net Zero and at the CILIP Conference in Liverpool we will be launching a Green Libraries Manifesto with a series of achievable but ambitious commitments to libraries, to demonstrate their leadership of the green agenda for their users. Sustainability is and will be a major priority for CILIP and our community over the lifetime of the “We Are CILIP” strategy. There is a tremendous opportunity to show leadership, improve the relevance and visibility of our services and make a real difference to library users everywhere. We are very much at the beginning of this journey and we have a lot to learn, but I hope that these initiatives will be the beginning of a conversation about how the whole of our profession can rise to the challenge. IP
Reference
1 Green Libraries Resources – CILIP: the library and information association
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