The Existential Threat of Climate Change, the Creative and Cultural Industries, and Cultural Policy

The chapter addresses a central paradox in the creative and cultural industries – namely, cultural systems are simultaneously among the most exposed to climate impacts and contributors to the practices and infrastructures that raise emissions, yet they also possess singular communicative capacities to reshape public understanding and motivate action. Drawing on climate science and cultural policy evidence, as well as examining two case studies (George Town, Penang’s climate crisis and current policy; and UNCTAD’s [2021] International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021), the chapter argues that reconciling this tension requires a pivot from output-focused instruments to ecosystem governance that foregrounds production conditions, environmental limits, and distributional outcomes. It synthesises three policy directions with demonstrated traction. Sector standards, tools, and conditionality can make low carbon practice routine across production ecologies, as evidenced by screen and theatre initiatives and national reporting partnerships. Digital and market regulation can be aligned with cultural policy to open platform effects to scrutiny and to improve discoverability and remuneration for creators within sustainable boundaries. International creative economy agendas can incorporate explicit ecological targets and adaptation finance so that growth narratives do not eclipse planetary constraints. The analysis situates these proposals within scholarship that traces how the sector’s neoliberal formation privileges small firms, project finance, and visibility metrics, and shows how correcting these features enables creative labour and institutions to contribute to mitigation and adaptation at scale. The creative and cultural industries are therefore not only at risk and implicated; with the right rules and infrastructures they are essential partners in building a culturally meaningful low carbon future.