The American Library Association (ALA) and the Sustainable Libraries Initiative (SLI) have teamed up to create a National Climate Action Strategy for Libraries to be released later this year.

Both organizations have been working to raise awareness in the profession for the need to act with urgency to create communities of practice that can help library workers understand the issue and that can provide the practical approaches to manage the predicted impacts and systemic nature of climate change.

While there has been a marked increase in the level of awareness and action on climate change in the profession, much thanks to the efforts of ALA and SLI, calls from climate scientists and policymakers from around the world to act faster, with more purpose and focus, cannot be ignored.

ALA has already taken several steps to help the profession focus on the need for action—from the formation of the ALA Sustainability Round Table, creating a national community of practice, to tying accreditation of library schools to the presence of a sustainability curriculum, to the recent recommitment to the core value of sustainability in the profession. The parallel work of the SLI has helped to supercharge the understanding and adoption of best practices that will help position libraries as responsive leaders in their communities, on their campuses, and in their schools. The SLI’s Sustainable Library Certification Program has proven very successful, with over 30 libraries/librarians already certified and another 100 slated to be certified in the coming years.

A recent partnership between the SLI and OCLC/WebJunction provided an amplification of the call to action for libraries to focus on this work, providing both a Distinguished Seminar Series entry on sustainability and a foundation-building series on sustainability that provides key professional development webinars, articles, and resources to help all library workers and trustees more fully understand the work involved.

Now that we have people’s attention, we need them to act with attention and intensity to truly make the advancements needed to keep libraries as relevant and responsive as possible in the face of climate change.

The National Climate Action Strategy will focus on three key areas to help library leaders more quickly adapt plans and goals to move the dial on mitigating the effects of climate change, adapting in the face of the predicted impacts, and ensuring work on both are done through a lens of climate justice.

• Climate change mitigation: reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the leading cause of climate change
• Climate change adaptation: how libraries can strengthen a community’s resilience in the face of the impacts of climate change
• Climate justice work: acknowledging and addressing how climate change can have social, economic, public health, and other adverse impacts on historically marginalized or underserved communities.

The working group consulting on the strategy initially drafted by the team at the SLI includes representatives from a variety of ALA stakeholders, including members of the Executive Board, Council Committee on Sustainability, Sustainability Round Table, Task Force on United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, Center for the Future of Libraries, Committee on Legislation, Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, Public Library Association, Young Adult Library Services Association, and the International Relations Committee, along with allies in the U.S. library community such as OCLC, the International Federation of Library Associations, the New Jersey State Library, and Califa Group. The group includes four Library Journal Mover & Shaker award winners: Rebekkah Smith Aldrich (’10), Matthew Bollerman (’20), Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada (’22), and Michele Stricker (’19).

Coming up next will be an online forum to introduce the strategy and solicit feedback from the field through an online survey this spring. To stay up to date on this project, sign up for the SLI’s monthly e-newsletter.

“Sustainability is a core value of librarianship,” said ALA President Emily Drabinski. “This plan builds on years of work by committed ALA member leaders and will help library workers gain further understanding, confidence, and access to resources to build a more sustainable future for libraries and the communities they serve.”

We must believe in the power of libraries to be leaders on the topic of sustainability. We need library professionals to see climate action as a part of their roles in order to face the current realities and dire predictions of climate change in the coming decades.

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich is Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System, Poughkeepsie, NY; cofounder of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative; a judge for LJ’s New Landmark Libraries; an LJ Mover & Shaker; and the principal author of the National Climate Action Strategy.