Nomad Exhibitions, a leading Edinburgh-based exhibition producer and designer, becomes one of the first arts organisations in the world to sign up to the United Nations Climate Neutral Now initiative. For Nomad, this pledge solidifies their commitment to tackle climate change and they hope to set the precedent for other stakeholders in the industry to join this important scheme.

Founded in 2015, the Climate Neutral Now initiative is part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, developing from the Paris Agreement. Nomad’s pledge as a signatory to this programme is to deliver, with immediate effect, all of their exhibitions and services with full carbon neutrality. This will be achieved through fulfilling the Climate Neutral Now’s three main objectives for carbon neutrality: measure, reduce, offset.

In practice, this means Nomad will be comprehensively evaluating the life cycle of each exhibition they produce by measuring their greenhouse gas emissions, reducing emissions throughout all activities, and financially compensating any emissions that cannot be avoided through UN certified emission reduction programmes. As an exhibition producer, Nomad designs and manages large-scale travelling exhibitions, collaborating with institutions globally to deliver high-quality installations, with partners including National Museums Scotland; Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Sciences and Innovation; Manchester Museum, UK; the Nanjing Museum, China; and La Caixa Foundation, Spain.

Due to their dependence on air travel and on utilising a wide range of construction materials, creating an environmentally conscious business model has always been at the forefront of Nomad’s strategy. Since their inception in 2012, Nomad have pioneered sustainable design and exhibition building practices, based on a circular economy model, including creating modular display systems for energy efficient transportation, as well as an extensive use of recyclable aluminium and fabric as opposed to commonly used, and hard to recycle, resin-bonded wood fibre panels and plastics. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sustainable development is no longer a matter of preference - it is an imperative. As a response to this urgency, for Nomad, the Climate Neutral Now pledge is a way of formalising their commitment to tackle climate change and to be held accountable for this commitment.