Following a civil society campaign, the UK’s Science Museum has recently ended its sponsorship deal with Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor. Many other British cultural institutions have already cut their ties with the fossil fuel industry in response to pressure from climate activists, who are calling for companies that cause immense climate harm to stop laundering their reputations through associations with organisations that enjoy high public standing. But the Science Museum still retains some fossil fuel sponsors, and the British Museum recently announced a 10-year agreement with BP. They should expect to face sustained pressure to force fossil fuel firms out of culture.

Civil society is working on all fronts to tackle the climate crisis. Around the word, activists are protesting in numbers to pressure governments and corporations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They’re using non-violent direct action and high-profile stunts, sometimes paying a heavy price as numerous states criminalise climate protest.

Campaigners are taking to the courts to hold governments and companies accountable for their climate commitments and the impacts of their activities, with recent breakthroughs in Belgium, India and Switzerland, among others, and many more cases pending. They’re pressuring institutions such as universities to stop investing in fossil fuels – 72 per cent of UK universities have pledged to divest – and putting forward corporate resolutions calling for stronger action.

At the global level, activists are working to influence key meetings, particularly the COP series of climate summits. At the most recent summit, COP28, states agreed for the first time on the need to cut fossil fuel emissions – an incredibly belated acknowledgement, but one that came only after intensive lobbying by civil society.

As pressure mounts, fossil fuel companies are looking for any way they can to portray themselves as responsible corporate citizens while continuing their lethal business of coal, gas and oil extraction for as long as possible. They want to make it look as though they’re transitioning to renewable energies and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, when the opposite is true. As global temperatures rise, greenwashing intensifies.

Cultural institutions, always on the lookout for sponsorship, are a prime target for fossil fuel companies with declining reputations but deep pockets. For them, the outlay is tiny compared to the benefits. Through sponsorship, they try to present themselves as generous philanthropists and borrow the legitimacy and high public standing of well-known institutions. But climate activists aren’t letting them get away with it. They’re putting growing pressure on art galleries and museums to end their fossil fuel funding.

Science Museum in the spotlight

The UK is ground zero for the campaign, since it’s home to numerous world-class galleries and museums long under pressure to attract private sector sponsorship and to oil and gas titans such as BP and Shell. Pretty much all of London’s major cultural institutions have taken fossil fuel funding in the past. But that’s far less the case now. Thanks to the efforts of campaigning groups such as Culture Unstained, Fossil Free London and Liberate Tate, several have cut these ties.

The latest victory came in July, when London’s Science Museum ended its contract with Norwegian state-owned oil giant Equinor. Equinor had sponsored WonderLab – an interactive children’s exhibition – since 2016.

Equinor continues to develop new extractive projects, despite the International Energy Agency making clear there can be no new fossil fuel developments if there’s any hope of meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. The corporation is the majority owner of the North Sea Rosebank oil and gas field, which the UK government approved for drilling last year. It can only increase greenhouse gas emissions.

The Science Museum publicly stated that the term of its sponsorship had simply come to an end, but emails showed that Equinor was in breach of the museum’s stated commitment to ensure sponsors comply with the Paris Agreement, as determined by the Transition Pathway Initiative, which assesses whether companies are adequately transitioning to a low-carbon economy.

The Equinor deal highlights some of the ways fossil fuel companies use sponsorship to manage their reputations. Last year it was revealed that the Science Museum’s contract contained a gagging clause preventing the museum saying anything that might harm the corporation’s reputation. Such restrictions could prevent museums discussing the central role of the fossil fuel industry in causing climate change – something particularly disturbing for an institution whose stated mission is to inspire the next generation of scientists, who’ll be working in a world profoundly altered by climate change. There are also examples of companies such as Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell trying to influence the content of exhibitions they sponsor.

As well as reputation-washing, fossil fuel companies can leverage sponsorships to lobby for further extraction: BP’s funding of a Mexican-themed event at the British Museum enabled it to network with Mexican government representatives as part of a successful bid for drilling licences. The company was accused of doing similar with the Australian government through sponsorship of an exhibition. As its funding of arts bodies became more controversial, BP was also reported to have brought together representatives of sponsored institutions to discuss how to deal with activists.

Voices from the frontline

Chris Garrard is co-founder and co-director of Culture Unstained.

 

Oil companies such as BP, Equinor and Shell sponsor arts and cultural institutions for two main reasons. Firstly, sponsorship deals help them to maintain what’s known as a ‘social licence to operate’. This is essentially a form of consent from wider society which relies upon a belief that they are responsible corporate citizens, and that what they are doing is ethically acceptable. By attaching their logos and brands to cultural institutions, they associate themselves with the progressive values of the arts, so when people think of BP, for example, they don’t associate it with climate impacts, polluting oil spills or toxic gas flaring in places like Iraq, but rather with culture, philanthropy and positive social contributions. It’s a form of cheap advertising and a way to clean up a toxic image. Relationships with cultural institutions also give fossil fuel companies a strategic platform for lobbying.

The Science Museum has explicitly avoided stating that Equinor’s dire record on climate change was the reason for ending its sponsorship deal and, even now, continues to defend its deals with Adani and BP, even though neither company is aligned with the Paris Agreement goals. Adani in particular is the world’s largest private coal producer, and the Science Museum has cynically sought to deflect criticism by weakly claiming it is only being sponsored by Adani’s renewable energy subsidiary, even though there are clear links between Adani Green Energy and the company’s coal mining business. This is a clear example of greenwashing and the Science Museum is actively helping promote it. Nevertheless, we see this victory with Equinor as a first step, and we’ll continue to push for Adani and BP to be removed from the museum as well.

While many museums and galleries have shifted away from fossil fuels and other unethical sponsors, some institutions will, when challenged, defend the records of their corporate sponsors. For example, even when presented with clear evidence, the British Museum has continued its partnership with BP while falsely claiming that BP is helping to lead the transition away from fossil fuels. Often, staff and workers at these institutions support or are sympathetic to our campaign, so the real obstacle to change is the concentration of decision-making power in a few people who aren’t properly accountable.

A different but important challenge is to ensure our campaigning in the UK and the global north is connected and accountable to those directly affected by the fossil fuel companies we are campaigning against. Whether it’s communities in Egypt, the US Gulf Coast or West Papua suffering from pollution and environmental degradation, or those already feeling the effects of climate change, we seek to build relationships of solidarity with them and find ways to offer them a platform.

 

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Chris. Read the full interview here.

Room for improvement

It’s unlikely this change would have happened without civil society pressure, which increased the museum’s reputational costs; its director had said that even if the museum received significant public funding, it would still seek oil company sponsorship. The decision marked the successful conclusion of an eight-year campaign involving young climate activists, scientists and civil society groups in the UK and Equinor’s home country, Norway.

But there’s still much room for improvement. The Science Museum still has a contract with BP, even though the Church of England divested from BP last year for the same reason the museum dropped Equinor: because the Transition Pathway Initiative assessed it wasn’t aligned with the Paris Agreement.

Perhaps even more grotesquely, the Science Museum’s new ‘Energy Revolution’ exhibition is sponsored by Adani, the world’s largest private coalmine developer, which is also involved in manufacturing drones Israel is using to kill people in Gaza. The museum claims the sponsorship is acceptable because it comes from Adani’s ‘green energy’ division, but climate activists see this as a smokescreen.

In April, campaigners held a sit-in protest against this latest deal. Hundreds of teachers have refused to take their students to the exhibition. In 2021, when the deal was struck, two trustees resigned in protest.

There are many ways to express disgust. Shell’s sponsorship of a Science Museum climate exhibition led some prominent academics to boycott the institution and refuse to allow their work to appear in its exhibitions. Several of the galleries and museums that have accepted fossil fuel money have seen activists occupy their spaces in protest. When the Tate group of galleries was sponsored by BP, Liberate Tate staged a series of artistic interventions, including one where people threw specially designed fake banknotes.

Common tactics: the Sacklers and the opioid crisis

This isn’t the first time galleries and museums have come under concerted pressure to end their relationships with abhorrent corporations. The successes of the climate movement mirror those of the campaign held in response to the opioid crisis in the USA. The use of these highly addictive drugs, prescribed to treat pain, has had devastating impacts: last year, an estimated 74,702 people died from synthetic opioid overdoses in the USA. Addiction to opioids can pave the way for illegal drug use and crime, devastating communities.

Much of the problem stems from the drug OxyContin, aggressively marketed to health professionals even after the risks became known. It was manufactured by Purdue Pharma, a company entirely owned by the billionaire Sackler family. The Sacklers were also major patrons of the arts: their names were emblazoned on countless prestigious cultural institutions around the world, promoting a positive association with the family name.

But this strength was turned into a weakness by a committed group of artists and addiction survivors, led by high-profile photographer Nan Goldin. They started staging direct actions in Sackler-sponsored institutions, demanding they end sponsorship deals and remove the Sackler name. And it worked: several galleries and museums cut ties, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate group and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Efforts continue to hold the Sackler family to account and get adequate redress for victims, but the Sacklers are now more notorious than lauded, no longer able to use the arts to launder their reputation.

British Museum on the wrong side of history

As long as it insists on taking fossil fuel money, the Science Museum can only expect more bad publicity. And it’s now something of a laggard. Many of the UK’s internationally renowned institutions have conceded civil society’s demands to cut the cord. The National Portrait Gallery, Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company and Tate have all severed links with BP, and the British Film Institute, National Theatre and Southbank Centre have all stopped accepting funding from Shell. In 2019, the Edinburgh Science Festival led the way, banning fossil fuel sponsorship in response to civil society pressure.

The trend has spread beyond the UK: Amsterdam’s renowned Van Gogh Museum ended its deal with Shell in response to campaigning. In 2020, the city’s famous museum quarter was declared free of fossil fuel sponsorship.

But alongside the Science Museum, there’s another major holdout: the British Museum, long a controversial institution for its vast collection of looted colonial-era artefacts, which it has no intention of returning. Last year it once again put itself on the wrong side of history by agreeing a new 10-year US$65.6 million deal with BP, making a mockery of its stated intention to phase out fossil fuel use. It acted in defiance of protests and a letter signed by over 300 museum professionals urging it to end its relationship with BP, while its deputy chair resigned in protest.

It’s not just the cultural sector that fossil fuel corporations are trying to co-opt – they’re also extensively involved in sport. Petrostates such as Qatar, and likely soon Saudi Arabia, are hosting peak global sporting events, sponsoring everything from elite athletes to grassroots sports, and using sovereign wealth funds to buy high-profile football clubs.

People rightly expect arts, sciences and sports to uphold exemplary standards because, at their best, they’re the highest expressions of what humanity can achieve. That’s why it’s so shocking when fossil fuel companies try to coopt them. All their attempts to launder their reputations must be met with determined resistance.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • Museums and galleries that have sponsorship agreements with fossil fuel corporations, including the British Museum and Science Museum, should end them immediately.
  • Civil society should apply sustained pressure to end fossil fuel sponsorship of any cultural institution.
  • Civil society should intensify campaigns to end the involvement of fossil fuel corporations in sport.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Cover photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images