Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation & Climate Heritage Network presents for the United Nations COP 26

Gullah/Geechee Nation ♦ October 27, 2021 ♦ Leave a comment

In 2019, Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation attended the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) to help unveil the “Climate Heritage Network“ to the world. In 2018, Queen Quet helped initiate this global organization during the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco and then traveled to Scotland a year later for the launch.

Queen Quet has worked diligently with other members of the Climate Heritage Network as one of the leaders of the network’s Working Group 7. Working Group 7 believes that cultural institutions and the arts, culture, and heritage fields can support and champion climate action by local communities and Indigenous Peoples. Working Group 7 promotes ways for cultural institutions and the arts, culture, and heritage fields to champion climate action by local communities and Indigenous Peoples. Queen Quet has been invited to be a living example of this during COP 26.

The twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UNFCCC will be hosted by the United Kingdom, in partnership with Italy. The summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. More than 190 world leaders will participate, along with tens of thousands of negotiators, government representatives, businesses and citizens for twelve days of talks. Queen Quet will present as part of the Climate Heritage Network on November 2, 2021 at 9 am EST. Those that would like to see the presentation should register at: https://cop-resilience-hub.org/. 

In September 2021 the Climate Heritage Network was named a partner in the UN High Level Climate Action Champion’s Race to Resilience.  The design of the CHN’s initiative was scoped during a series of global events held in 2020 as part of the Champions’ November Dialogues. The November Dialogues provided the data, insights, ideas and standing to launch the initiative. The November Dialogues also supported the inclusion of new cultural goals in the 2020 update of the Marrakesh Global Partnership for Climate Action Adaptation Pathway Action Table.  The inclusion of the CHN in the Race to Resilience marks quite possibly the very first time the culture sector has ever been included as a full-fledged partner in a global, UN climate campaign.  

The objectives of the November event are to:

• Introduce participants to the Race to Resilience.
• Launch the Climate Heritage Network’s Race to Resilience Initiative and stimulate exciting and initial expressions of interest. 
• Highlight key ways that culture supports the resilience of people and communities and especially the most vulnerable.

Tackling climate change requires an all-of-society-effort but too often the cultural dimensions have been missed. The announcement in September 2021 of the inclusion of Culture in the Race to Resilience flips this paradigm. The Race to Resilience aims to catalyse a step-change in global ambition for climate resilience. Join this launch for the Climate Heritage Network’s Race to Resilience Partner Campaign and learn how cultural actors– from arts to heritage – can play their part, scaling up the use of culture-based strategies for pursuing a resilient world where we don’t just survive climate stresses but thrive in spite of them.