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What is the role of creative industries in the Anthropocene? An argument for planetary cultural policy

Miikka Pyykkönen a, Christiaan De Beukelaer bc

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2025.101971

Under a Creative Commons license

Open access

Highlights

•International policy discourses on culture and sustainability are anthropocentric, economic growth-oriented and methodologically nationalist, and international cultural policy organisations and documents, such as United Nations resolution on the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021, have been impotent in intertwining culture with ecological sustainability.

•Economy for Sustainable Development 2021 is analyzed as an examplar of this anthropocentric and economist discourse.

•The ideological underpinnings of cultural policy are the primary reason why culture has not been seriously recognized in international sustainability policies. A profound shift away from anthropocentric worldviews, growth-oriented ideologies, and methodologically nationalist frameworks is needed.

•This ‘new’ understanding of culture in international cultural policies have to cover nature and ecology and see humans and their culture as part of larger ecosystemic framework. Incorporating such a view in public policy requires a new kind of “planetary cultural policy”.

Abstract

Many artistic expressions call for cultural, social and political change. Though the policy environments in which they emerge remain predominantly wedded to a consumption-driven creative economy. In doing so, they tacitly endorse a methodologically nationalist perspective on artistic expression, trade in creative goods and services, and cultural identity. By using the United Nations resolution on the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021 as a case in point, we argue that the language of this document, which reflects the current hegemonic discourse of creative economy, misses its target when claiming to promote sustainability because it is (1) anthropocentric, (2) growth-focused and (3) methodologically nationalist. Through a discourse analysis of this particular UN resolution, we demonstrate the multiple and conflicting connections between culture and sustainability through the perspective of planetary well-being. The main target of our criticism is the anthropocentric nature of sustainability discourses, but also their unreserved promotion of perpetual economic growth. In response, we articulate the need for a profound cultural shift from anthropocentric worldviews, growth-oriented ideologies, and methodologically nationalist frameworks to enable environmentally engaged cultural policies and citizens.

Keywords

Creative economy; Climate crisis; Anthropocentrism; Methodological nationalism; Cosmopolitanism; Planetary well-being

1. Introduction: the tension between planet, people and culture

In November 2019, the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared that 2021 would be the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. The idea of the theme year was formulated in discussions between United Nations (UN) agencies, including UN-Habitat, UNESCO and UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; recently rebranded as UN Trade & Development), which also consulted representatives of pro-creative economy organisations such as the OECD and the Asia-Europe Foundation. Indonesia drafted the resolution text, which was then presented to a group of representatives of 27 countries from all inhabited continents. The final and published version of the resolution is a consensus of these multi-layered discussions. Rather than being a final result that every involved state can fully rally behind, in practice a “consensus” text is precisely one containing conflicts. It is through the subtleties of phrasing that consenting parties ensure that all other parties can recognise their red lines, pet peeves, and concerns in the text, without (seemingly) ceding too much ground. A consensus is therefore not a strong joint position, but merely a position that no one strongly objects to.

Much like other United Nations documents, the resolution commits loyalty to the background organisations and their policies and programmes, as well as the international organisations and their branches that work on the topics of the resolution:

Recalling the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which states that the organization, as part of its purposes and functions, will maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge by encouraging cooperation among the nations in all branches of intellectual activity, and noting the report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on culture and sustainable development, in which it is stated that cultural and creative industries should be part of economic growth strategies […] Welcoming the efforts of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other entities of the United Nations system to promote the creative economy for sustainable development. (United Nations, 2019, 2, emphasis added)

The resolution is, therefore, not so much a visionary document but largely a reflection of past initiatives and interventions. The document is thus a palimpsest through which decades of ideas and initiatives filter through.

The key argument of the resolution is that the creative industries can, should and do promote sustainable and innovation-based economic growth. The resolution mainstreams culture in and for sustainability by defining culture above all through its economic significance and national scope: “[The resolution] encourages all to observe the year in accordance with national priorities to raise awareness, promote cooperation and networking, encourage sharing best practices and experiences, enhance human resource capacity, promote an enabling environment at all levels as well as tackle the challenges of the creative economy” (UNCTAD, 2021). UNCTAD led the implementation of the theme year policies and activities in consultation with UNESCO and other relevant UN agencies.

Despite the triumphant tone of the resolution, culture plays a minor role in policies for sustainable development (Duxbury et al., 2017). If anything, it plays a contradictory role: art and culture can certainly play a positive part, but the creative industries have an enormous environmental impact that needs to be addressed (Miller, 2018). This is partly because of how the sector operates, but also because of the sponsorship connections many arts institutions maintain with fossil fuel producers, airlines and car manufacturers (Evans, 2015).

Our article builds on the following streams and debates in cultural policy: the dominant discourses and trends in international cultural policies, the economisation of cultural policies, the position of creative economies and industries in national economies, and, most of all, the meaning and position of culture in policies and politics for an ecologically sustainable world, that is, the rethinking of the human/culture and nature relationship. Brkldly, and eventually, the focus of our article is on the relation between cultural policy and cosmopolitan citizenship and identity, we posit that a new kind of human actorship in the era of climate crisis, one that includes the idea of human beings as members of the planetary community/entity. This is because we think we need more critical use of comprehensive research and policy concepts cultural policies. Such concepts still remain disconnected from the commonplace understandings of sustainability in cultural policy, as we explain in this paper. We use concepts such as the planetary well-being approach (Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Brundtland Commission, 1987) down-to-earth approach, which combine ecological, social, cultural and economic perspectives, allowing us to transcend the afore-mentioned tensions and dualisms. (A) They allow us to move towards a more robust and permanent approach when it comes to human and cultural actions – be they economic, anthropocentric or related to identity/citizenship – within natural ecosystems. (B) They enable us to rethink what culture should mean to become a key concept in the manifold efforts for sustainable futures. (C) We can use them to break the local/national-global dualism and reconstruct cosmopolitan or cosmopolitical (Beck, 2016) approaches.

This article thus explores how international policy documents frame culture, creative economy and culture’s role in sustainability. We look, in particular, at the documents and narratives proposed by United Nations Agencies, because they and their sub-actors pursue trendsetting in terms of what national, regional and local cultural policies focus on, and how culture should or could be approached (Pirnes, 2008). We are aware that there are local cultural policies and practices, which include critical and eco-sensitive features (see e.g. Bell et al., 2011; Gross & Wilson, 2020; Perry & Symons, 2019) and which potentially could be scaled at least to national level policies and practices, but to study them and their potential impacts is a topic for another article. Nevertheless, one of the key issues in international cultural policies on sustainability in the near-future is to change the orientation radically from one-sided economism towards discursive formulation and facilitation of ecological and non-anthropocentric ‘sustainable culture’. Part of this should be the rebuilding these policies more bottom-up than before in the sense that local ecological, planetary and non-capitalist forms of cultural production would get more attention in them.

The overall question this article sets out to answer is thus: Do the hegemonic creative economy and climate change discourses of international cultural and sustainability policies recognise the urgent need to rethink the human/nature and culture/nature relations? This is particularly relevant as climate change itself is a tricky concept that can be characterised as a “hyperobject” (Morton, 2013) or as an “event” (Tavory & Wagner-Pacifici, 2022). The main target of our criticism is the anthropocentric nature of the resolution and its unreserved promotion of perpetual economic growth, which are fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability (Hickel & Kallis, 2020; Jackson, 2021; Raworth, 2017) and “organismal needs”, as we explain below (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). By using the above concepts, we try to articulate the need for a profound cultural shift from anthropocentric, growth-oriented ideologies and methodologically nationalist frameworks to enable environmentally engaged cultural policies.

2. Data, methods and theory

Through a discourse analysis of the resolution, we demonstrate the multiple and conflicting connections between culture and sustainability through the perspective of planetary well-being and other relevant current social scientific theories.

Our primary data consists of a single document: the resolution on the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2019), which declared 2021 to be that year, to be led and implemented by UNCTAD and Indonesia. This decision – together with the more general policy discursive and organisational history – has influenced the way the relation of creativity and sustainability is understood in the Resolution as UNCTAD unexceptionally defines it with the strong economy association (see e.g. UNCTAD, 2022) and Indonesian creative policies have also a long tradition of linking it to economic growth (De Beukelaer, 2021).

The resolution is exemplary of how a cultural policy commonly connects culture and creativity to sustainable development. As we explore in section “The context of the resolution” the document under scrutiny is a political culmination of two decades of UN inter-agency work on the issue. It is an apt summary of the issues addressed, and given its limited length it exposes the discursive shortcuts inherent to the discourse – which often remain buried in verbose reports. The document is exemplary in its message and useful in its brevity, even if it offers a simplified conceptualisation of the creative economy. However, the resolution is not norm-setting. It rather reflects existing norms and concerns. Like many such United Nations documents, it offers (almost by definition) a consensus text of how states see a certain issue.

Due to the importance of this history and context, we have also looked beyond this single document by engaging with other recent documents of international organisations to describe more comprehensively the current hegemonic discourse on cultural sustainability and its construction over time in the field of international cultural policies (see below).

We use rhetorical discourse analysis as our method for analysing the resolution. It means that we concentrate on “textual practices” (Fairclough, 1995, 185): how certain kinds of words and expressions are used to construct certain kinds of definitions of culture and sustainability and to convince the reader of their validity (cf. Johnstone & Eisenhart, 2008). We also pay attention to other levels of discursive formation by shedding light on the organisational roles and practices that influence the messages of the resolution and their value in international and national cultural policies (cf. Pyykkönen, 2012). Before the actual discourse analysis, we provide a theoretically-driven content analysis of the resolution to initially clarify its key ways of speaking about culture and sustainability in the light of our theoretical framework.

We use multiple theories and theoretical perspectives to interpret the results and further discuss our findings. The first theoretical perspective focuses on the cultural economy (e.g., Throsby, 2010) and the idea of a so-called value-based economy (Klamer, 2017), which aim to emphasise the role of culture in orthodox economic thinking. The second theoretical perspective concentrates on recent social scientific and anthropological theories that attempt to rethink and reformulate the human/culture/nature relations. Here our aim is to show how the definitions of culture and sustainability – under the umbrella of the creative economy discourse – tend to be growth-centred, anthropocentric and methodologically nationalistic (Beck, 2006; 2016; Latour, 2018; Malm, 2018). The third theoretical perspective focuses on planetary well-being, which to our understanding further directs the criticism at the conventional culture and sustainability nexus by suggesting orientations and practices that intertwine culture – and policies concerning it – with our planetary existence and identity in a novel way (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Besides planetary well-being, we rely on Tim Jackson’s (2009, 2021) ideas on prosperity and post-growth to put practical flesh on the theoretical bones of the necessary change.

Building on these theoretical and conceptual foundations, we strive for a new conceptualisation of “planetary cultural policy”, which consists of such policy discourses and practices on heritage, arts, creative work and identity in which nature and culture are seen as part of the same systemic totality, and the intrinsic and other values of cultural activities are determined based on how they promote ecological sustainability.

3. The hegemonic discourses of culture and sustainability

Sustainability and culture have been discussed in the national and international cultural policy contexts for over 20 years from various perspectives: What does “culture” stand for in culture and sustainability? What is the role of culture among the pillars of social, economic, and ecological sustainability? What is cultural sustainability? And, above all, how should cultural policies tackle sustainability issues? Due to the diversity of interests, intentions, expectations, discourses and related practices, sustainability does not have any single form in cultural policies. Similarly, researchers argue that culture has remained too vague to be a pragmatic policy issue, confined to the margins of national and international policies for sustainability (e.g., Sabatini, 2019; Soini & Dessein, 2016). Others claim that proponents of cultural sustainability have not managed to intertwine culture with the other pillars of sustainability, especially ecological sustainability, which has diluted the significance of culture in sustainability policies (e.g., Kagan, 2011). For instance, culture is not explicitly mentioned in any of the titles of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2018; Vlassis, 2015).

As a reaction – less openly expressed – to this vagueness and marginalisation of culture in global sustainability policies, key international cultural policy agencies such as UNESCO and UNCTAD have embraced the economisation of culture (De Beukelaer & Spence, 2019; Garner & O’Connor, 2019; Pyykkönen, 2012).Despite some voices that have tried to expand the hegemonic economic reductionism of value (‘economism’) in more or less liberal societies by emphasising the social and educational values of cultural expressions (e.g., Klamer, 2017; Throsby, 2010), the research on this move has been ontologically uncritical the “economy”. The issue of how culture should contribute to sustainability – especially to its ecological dimension, which we consider the most critical and significant one – in this intertwinement has also remained almost unstudied in realpolitik.

This economism in the culture and sustainability discourse – and the general understanding of culture’s value – is underpinned by widely shared and ideologised significations of the capitalist market economy. In particular, the neoclassical theories of economic growth (Solow, 1999), Schumpeterian ideas on innovation, creativity and entrepreneurialism (Schumpeter, 1942; see also Potts, 2009) and related political ideas and trends (e.g., Hautamäki, 2010) have had a tremendous but thus far under-researched impact on cultural policies. These ideologies have created and strengthened a global discourse according to which the wealth and well-being of the world, nations and people are dependent on increasing productivity and economic growth. Through education, consumerism and national financial and economic policies, for instance, and through being entwined with the globalising knowledges and practices of capitalist production, these principles and their logics have become naturalised presumptions in our societies and cultures (Jackson, 2009; 2021). According to some current researchers of philosophy, environmental sociology and politics, capitalist market economism has intertwined with two cornerstones of our Western culture: anthropocentrism and methodological nationalism (Beck, 2006; Malm, 2018). Latour (2018) argues that the cultural mindset stemming from this hinders us from thinking of ourselves and our actions – practical, discursive, political etc. – as “terrestrial”, as being part of the earth and its ecosystems when acting both locally and globally.

Over time, the principles of capitalist production and market economy have also become normalised in cultural policies that guide the creative and cultural industries (McGuigan, 2015), particularly after key international players such as UNESCO and UNCTAD have adopted them as norms (De Beukelaer & Spence, 2019; Pyykkönen, 2012). In the case of UNESCO, it has meant the culmination of its long “struggle” to justify the significance of culture and cultural diversity by creating such a numerical and measurable framework discourse for them. This framework resonates positively with both the dominant rationalities of global politics and the interests of nation states and their “methodological nationalism”. UNCTAD has helped popularise the “creative economy” discourse since 2004. UNCTAD’s ostensible goal is to enhance the prosperity and wealth of the poorest countries by facilitating access to global markets for their products. Both UNCESCO and UNCTAD implicitly ground their work on anthropocentrism: the ideas and the actions they support are from humans, for humans. Nature is an instrument of their creative expressions and economic efforts.

One might argue that this particular resolution – and the work of the United Nations in general – is already “planetary” or “universal”. We disagree, because United Nations agencies are intergovernmental forums that serve to find a common ground among nations through multilateral processes (De Beukelaer & Vlassis, 2019), not to foster an overarching set of principles that serve humanity or the planet – let alone the “universe” – as a whole. Hence, the discourse we criticise is inter-national at best, whereas what we call for is a fundamental shift in the normative foundations of global governance, by prioritising the planetary above the (inter)national. In our approach and in the context of this analysis, planetarism means that in global cultural policy, in addition to human values and well-being – and against the dominant emphasis on economic value – the values ​​and well-being of the environment has to be seriously and thoroughly considered, and to reconsider the concept of culture and to rescale it so that it intertwines with the nature and not detaches from it, as has been mostly typical for the hegemonic narrative of modernism (Koistinen et al., 2024; Kortetmäki et al., 2021; see also Latour, 2017). Alasuutari (2016) argues that policy discourses across most domains have become “synchronised”, not through coercion, but through the voluntary creation of epistemic communities. In this discourse making and identicalisation the supranational organisations, such as UN and EU, are significant players due to their legal and legitimate grounds to determine the dissemination of ideas and discourses to international and intranational policymaking. These kinds of organisations take a clear step forward on putting the ecological sustainability as the first and main goal of the cultural policies. They thus actually, though not inherently, act as an ‘obligatory passage point’ for planetarisation of cultural policies. Signs of this can be already found from the documents such as New European Bauhaus (European Commission, 2021) and Pact for the Future (United Nations, 2024), and some related policy initiatives. How these changes take place in practice, is always an empirical question and a topic of deep discussion and observation beyond the scope of this article, where our focus is on global cultural policymaking discourses.

Research debates have been more diverse than the policy discussions, especially the dominant policy discourses. Among the best-known research publications on culture and sustainability are those originating in the research network “Investigating Cultural Sustainability” (which was active 2011–2015), which brought together more than 50 European researchers. One of the key findings of this collaborative research is that culture can function for, in and as sustainable development (Dessein et al., 2015; Soini & Birkeland, 2014). Consequently, if cultural policy wants to broaden its scope of influence, it should opt to focus on the “for” sustainable development perspective because it allows the development of the sustainability of cultural expressions as well as the use of the cultural sphere and policies to enhance other aspects of sustainability, especially the ecological one (Duxbury et al., 2017). One of the key perspectives in policy reports and research papers on culture and sustainability is that they strive for “mainstreaming culture” by explaining it and its meanings next to the other pillars of sustainability. In our view, this, however, involves the “risk” that analyses merely concentrate on explaining the value of different kinds of cultural expressions and thus usually justify the economic determination of culture (e.g., Sabatini, 2019).

While some of the above-mentioned studies briefly suggest that the interrelatedness of biological and cultural forms of diversity should be enhanced in the culture and sustainability discourse/praxis (see, e.g., Dessein et al., 2015), we try to critically renew and complement them. We argue that the “mainstreaming of culture” should not be realised on an “anything goes” or economic basis, but rather by binding culture strongly and explicitly to the planetary and ecological aspects of sustainability. This does not only concern economism, but applies to anthropocentrism and methodological nationalism as well: the “planetary mainstreaming of culture” should consider principles, solutions and identities/citizen-subjectivities broader than national and human ones – ones that are both cosmopolitical and ecosystemic (see also Beck, 2006; Malm, 2018).

4. The context of the resolution

The concept of sustainable development was introduced in 1987 by the “Brundtland Commission”, formally known as the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission, 1987). It first defined “sustainable development” in its report Our Common Future. This document aimed to respond to the environmental threat of global warming and the need to raise the living standards of those in so-called developing countries as well as to ensure a focus on economic growth, which was seen as one of the key indicators of economically sustainable development. Culture was not an explicit topic in the report, although many of its themes were related to it. When culture was first explicated as an issue of sustainability in international cultural policy during the UNESCO Decade of Culture and Development (1988–1997), it was connected to socioeconomic dimensions. Culture was seen as a root and a driving force of economic development and social improvement in so-called developing countries (WCCD, 1995). As we already referred, this stance has been predominant in UNCTAD’s and UNESCO’s recent approaches on culture and sustainability.

UNCTAD has been instrumental in framing culture in and for sustainability, especially in so-called developing countries. UNCTAD has been greatly involved in the international creative economy policy discourses since 2004, which also marked their beginning globally. Its programmes and documents have framed culture and sustainability to describe the broader discursive practice that is indelibly linked to the resolution and its overwhelmingly economic tone. UNCTAD uses programmes and reports to turn its rich datasets on trade in creative goods and services into analyses and trends. The best known is the Creative Economy Programme, dating back to 2004 (see, e.g., UNCTAD, 2022). The programme’s main purpose is to generate “economic information through a trade lens, to understand past trends and project into the future and to promote data-led understanding of trade in creative goods and services, intellectual property, ideas and imagination” (ibid.). At its core are the so-called Creative Economy Mandates (see ibid.), one of which is the resolution we are studying here. The mandates are based on the research and policy analyses that UNCTAD produces with its partners. The central ones for UNCTAD’s meaning making are creative industry reports such as Creative Industry 4.0: Towards a New Globalized Creative Economy (UNCTAD, 2022), which aims to argue not only that the creative economy is crucial for national and global economies, but also that the creative industries can actually be key drivers of the technological change and, thus, the large-scale economic and livelihood changes of the near future.

UNESCO, whose mandate explicitly covers culture, is another key actor in defining culture in, for and as sustainability. Since the afore-mentioned Brundtland Commission (1987) report, it has explicitly discussed sustainability as a key issue to enhance through its policies. UNESCO’s declarations and conventions – such as Our Creative Diversity (WCCD, 1995), Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage (UNESCO, 2001) and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO, 2005) – have outlined UNESCO’s arguments on the need to secure a sustainable future and apply culture in it. One might even say that UNESCO has been the prima driver of novel significations and contexts for culture within the framework of sustainability (cf. Dessein et al., 2015, 45, 51). The 2005 UNESCO Convention is a useful starting point for analysing the organisation’s rationale on culture and sustainability as it stresses the economic significance of cultural expressions and the construction of strong cultural industries (De Beukelaer et al., 2015; Garner & O’Connor, 2019; Pyykkönen, 2012).

UNESCO’s work is not only about making meanings, but also consists of collecting and analysing worldwide data on culture and sustainability. On the basis of this knowledge, it launches and participates in projects that promote culture in and for sustainability, such as the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. UNESCO worked hard to get culture included in the Sustainable Development Goals (Soini & Birkeland, 2014) but was not successful as none of the original 17 SDGs focus exclusively on culture (United Nations, 2018). However, there are official post-SDG explanations about how culture nonetheless is “at the heart of SDGs” (Hosagrahar, 2017), and what nations and local advocates should do to pay attention to culture when trying to follow the SDGs (UCLG, 2021). After a few years of active campaigning, culture was finally explicitly noted in four of what are called SDG targets in the revised version of the goals (United Nations, 2019).

It is not only the UN or its agencies that have intertwined culture and sustainability with the economy in recent international policies. Both the OECD and the G20 have recently published reports that are very much in line with the principles and objectives of UNCTAD and the resolution we analyse here. Although the OECD pays attention to the creative economy’s potential in enhancing environmental sustainability in its note for Italy’s 2021 G20 presidency (OECD, 2021), the paper includes parts that openly favour culture’s role for economic growth (e.g., ibid., 12). The text-level discursive similarity between the G20’s (2021) Creative Economy 2030 policy brief and UNCTAD’s recent statements is striking: “Before COVID-19 hit, the global creative economy was growing rapidly in many regions. This momentum should not be lost in the wake of the pandemic; rather, greater investment needs to flow to the creative industries that have the potential to make localised and high impact, and help us shift to a new sustainable economy” (ibid., 9–10). This is not surprising as representatives of UNCTAD and other pro-creative economy organisations (e.g., the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and the Global Project Culture and Creative Industries) have participated in writing the G20’s policy brief. The World Bank & UNESCO (2021), too, greatly participates in the economist discourse making through its publication Cities, Culture, Creativity: Leveraging Culture and Creativity for Sustainable Urban Development and Inclusive Growth, jointly produced with UNESCO: “Cultural and creative industries are key drivers of the creative economy and represent important sources of employment, economic growth, and innovation, thus contributing to city competitiveness and sustainability” (ibid., 2).

5. The resolution

The resolution is an exemplary and nearly caricatural account of the discourse surrounding the “creative economy”. Ecological sustainability is almost completely absent from the resolution, and when it is mentioned, it is subordinated to capitalist economic objectives. In our analysis of the resolution, we found three interlinked categories through/in which the significations of culture are constituted: (i) Anthropocentrism; (ii) Economic Determinism; and (iii) Methodological Nationalism. Through our analysis, we argue that these discourses are problematic in terms of ecological sustainability, post-Anthropocene subjectivities, and notions of planetary well-being and prosperity (cf. Jackson, 2009; Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Latour, 2018).

5.1. Anthropocentrism

In general, anthropocentrism refers to a human-centred worldview and morality: humans are the only rational and truly meaning-making species and hence the key agents of the world; they are the ones who can, through work and reuse, dominate objects that originally belonged to nature; they can own and assume control over nature due to their supreme capabilities; and the value of nature is determined by its value for humans so that nature does not have an intrinsic value (Barry & Frankland, 2002). Though this raises questions of what the Anthropocene means. Commonly, it’s a shorthand for the idea “that modern human activity is large relative to the basic processes of planetary functioning, and therefore that human social, economic, and political decisions have become entangled in a web of planetary feedbacks (Malhi, 2016). Though it risks masking the deeply unequal and inequitable distribution of human influences and consequences on this way of looking at “our” era (Malm & Hornborg, 2014).

What is emblematic of anthropocentrism is that humans are either consciously or unconsciously defined and valued against nature and its actors such as animals. This is a typical text-level ‘regularity’ (see Foucault, 1972) and order in the whole centrism discourse. On the other hand, in ecocentrism and biocentrism, for instance, nature and its well-being are observed against humans. This discursive order derives from the nature/culture division, one of the major narratives in Western thought. This binarism is indeed one of the most problematic aspects of the “centrisms” in terms of ecological sustainability because it separates humans and nature from each other per se (Boddice, 2011).

As we have already claimed, conventional cultural policy understands culture as a merely human issue and makes the human the subject of and subject to cultural policy and its share of rights, actorships, beneficiaries and, in the end, the bios itself. Most studies and documents on cultural sustainability do not really pay attention to the position and role of nature or natural agents. We can take a key UN text as an example: although the UN Sustainable Development Goals address the sustainability of the environment in multiple ways and dimensions, they mostly focus on the human perspective, and the non-human aspects of sustainability are considered only if they instrumentally contribute to the human aspects (see also Dryzek, 2005, 157). The resolution also highlights the centrality of humans within its proposed approach to linking culture and sustainability:

Recognizing the role of the creative economy in creating full and productive employment and decent work, supporting entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, encouraging the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, stimulating innovation, empowering people, promoting social inclusion, and reducing poverty […]

Highlighting that the creative economy encourages creativity and innovation in attaining inclusive, equitable and sustainable growth and development, while facilitating life transitions and supporting women, youth, migrants and older persons, as well as empowering people in vulnerable situations […]

Stressing that the creative economy can contribute to the three dimensions of sustainable development and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, including by fostering economic growth and innovation, eradicating poverty, creating full and productive employment and decent work for all, improving the quality of life and empowerment of women and young people. (United Nations, 2019, 3)

As illustrated by these excerpts, anthropocentrism stands in a logical relation to economic goals. Creative economic practices serve humans and human development without reflecting the ecological limits of these actions. Superficially, it seems that everything is in order: if the functioning of the creative economy is secured and supported, it will improve the well-being and actorship of all humans. However, we argue that this thinly veiled anthropocentrism undermines the ultimate aims of the resolution itself as well as all the other major cultural policy documents that deal with sustainability. If we want to strive for true sustainability – at the pace necessary to prevent the massive environmental crisis we are facing at the moment – we should “focus on the systems and processes that support life, well-being, and biodiversity at different spatial scales” (Kortetmäki et al., 2021, 2).

Most commonly, anthropocentrism is not an explicit point of departure or a goal. However, policy documents and research have been criticised for their “human-centred sustainability” (e.g., Lepeley, 2019): despite their good intentions, they are too much oriented to human agents and undermine the role of humans as part of broader systems and networks that also include non-human actors; all cultural and human actions have ecological and ecosystemic impacts on the planetary future (Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Latour, 2018; Malm, 2018).

The resolution is a model example of this human-centred sustainability. Although it does not explicitly mention anthropocentrism, its discussion of sustainability is limited to human needs and well-being, especially from the perspective of prosperity and economic growth. The more moral and principled sections are also human-centred: when important values and goals (human rights, human creativity and ideas, gender equality, peace) are listed, no reference is made to environmental issues, except for a loose mentioning of sustainable lifestyle. However, what overemphasises the resolution’s anthropocentrism above all is that there is no explicit recognition of planetary wellbeing, not even the term “ecological sustainability”.

5.2. Economic determinism

As the title of the resolution already indicates, the economy is its main theme. The resolution lists ways in which the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) can enhance economic growth – without, however, specifying whether it means the growth of national economies or that of private businesses – and in which the economic growth brought by the CCIs fosters social values and goals such as “empowerment for all”, “eradicating poverty”, “decent work for all” and “empowerment of women and young people”, as the following excerpts illustrate:

Recognizing the need to promote sustained and inclusive economic growth, foster innovation and provide opportunities, benefits and empowerment for all and respect for all human rights […]

[N]oting the report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on culture and sustainable development, in which it is stated that cultural and creative industries should be part of economic growth strategies […]

Recognizing the ongoing need to support developing countries and countries with economies in transition in diversifying production and exports, including in new sustainable growth areas, including creative industries. Emphasizing the resilient growth in international trade in creative industries, including the trade of creative goods and services, and its contribution to the global economy, and recognizing the economic and cultural values of the creative economy. (United Nations, 2019, 1–2)

Economic significance is a relatively new perspective in international cultural policy discourses: while the focus on the economic value of culture was mainly criticised until the 1980s due to the instrumentality, recuperation and alienation of arts, culture, creativity and passion (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002, 94–136; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2007; McGuigan, 2015). Bilton (2007), among others, argues that in the 1990s, experts, consultants and researchers started to speak positively about the economic value and meanings of arts and culture. Gradually, this perspective was taken up in cultural policies and by their key spokespersons such as administrators, educators and consultants, and finally by cultural actors and professionals as well. The current discourse on the economic side of culture is neutral or even downright positive about and in favour of the commodification of cultural products. This view on the cultural industries has spread in recent years together with the increasingly prevalent talk about the “creative industries”. Bilton describes the conceptual evolution from cultural industries to creative industries as follows:

The term “cultural industries” indicates that creativity grows out of a specific cultural context and emphasizes the cultural content of ideas, values and traditions. The term “creative industries” emphasizes the novelty of ideas and products and places creativity in a context of individual talent, innovation and productivity. (Bilton, 2007, 164)

This shift resonates with larger structural developments: the discursive transition from cultural industries to creative industries started in the 1990s along with the shifts in the capitalist market economy and its business structures and economic, labour and social policies. Whereas the traditional material industries weakened in so-called Western countries, the developing immaterial and digital information economy needed concepts like creativity, innovation and information and related practices to an extensive extent. Cultural policies and cultural policy researchers seized the moment and boldly defined arts and culture as the core of the emerging creative economy and designated it as a key economic growth sector. Creative industry/economy is a vaguer concept than cultural industry/economy, but its benefit is its broader scope and association with other – economically more important – industries and sectors. Through “creative industry” or “cultural and creative industries”, it is possible to raise the broad economic importance of arts and culture – at least rhetorically (Garnham, 2005).

The “economy” in creative economy refers to the organisation and the work of structures, institutions, groups and individuals concerning the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods and services that are defined creative and cultural. In this context, a product is therefore one that results from creativity – whether individually, collectively or industrially contributed – and is meant to be sold in the market, and its market value is at least partially based on the creativity used in its production (Throsby, 2010).

This economism is criticised because of its instrumental character, and because it endangers the intrinsic value of culture (e.g., Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002, 94–136; McGuigan, 2015). Recently, critical attention has focused more on the factors of precarious working conditions and the exploitation of the passion and creativity of creative workers (e.g., Gielen, 2015; McRobbie, 2016). Less thought has been given to the fact that whether material or immaterial, the production of creative goods for economic growth is indelibly against the fundamentals of ecological sustainability (De Beukelaer, 2019a). However, there is a growing body of research literature theorising alternative forms of cultural economy (e.g. Clammer, 2016, 65–90; Conill et al., 2012; Maurer, 2008; Vanolo, 2012; see more about his later in this section). These studies share a justification of non-capitalist values for the cultural production and work and the exploration of post-capitalist practices of cultural sector and production (e.g. commoning). While many of them take a critical stance towards the capitalist economic growth, very few of them observe the issue from the point of view of ecological values or practices, the radically different relation of culture and nature (i.e. ecologically sustainable culture and non-antropocentric cultural subjectivity), and how these alternative paradigms are – or should be – considered in cultural policies. Increasingly, research includes perspectives on how culture and nature can be merged on the conceptual level of the cultural policies, and how culture can be approached foundational in the de- and post-growth economies and their national and local practical applications (Banks & Oakley, 2024; McCartney et al., 2023; Pyykkönen, 2024).

In this context, we neither buy into the doxa of economic growth, nor do we dogmatically defend degrowth: we remain growth-agnostic. Our key objective is to stop using economic turnover as a proxy for other goals, such as those concerning creativity, culture and environment, because they cannot be captured by this proxy (cf. van den Bergh, 2010). The obvious alternative would be to set policy objectives that do not explicitly build on growth. The macro-economic outcome could be growth or degrowth, but this ought to be secondary to stated objectives, which in our case relate to both formulating non-econocentric and non-anthropocentric international cultural policies (especially when speaking about culture and sustainability) and – through national and local policies – paving way for the ecologically sustainable cultural productions instead of capitalist cultural industries. These are important goals both for changing the mentalities and practices (i.e. immaterial and material “consumer cultures”) of our societies and recognizing the crucial place of labour-intensive jobs in post-growth economies (cf. Jackson, 2021).

The growth and intensification of creative production – and even the maintenance of the current level – will require unsustainable amounts of resources such as raw materials, energy, transportation and devices (Jackson, 2009; see also De Beukelaer, 2019). Meanwhile, research shows that it is possible for all humans to live within planetary boundaries and above social thresholds – that is, within the “doughnut” or the “safe operating space for humanity” – though not without radically rebalancing consumption patterns between rich and poor people (Hickel, 2019; O’Neill et al., 2018; see also Gibson-Graham et al., 2013; Gupta et al., 2024) while also addressing the colonial root causes of planetary plunder (Agyeman et al., 2003; Jackson, 2009; Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Malm, 2018; Rockström et al., 2009). The change requires the broad and effective adoption of post-growth thinking, attitudes and their implementation in economic and social practices, which in addition to greener production and massively less consumption of material goods has to include practices of equal and inclusive social work and health-care, and democratisation of decision-making processes and citizen-involvement in governance (Gibson-Graham et al., 2013; Gupta et al., 2024; Kortetmäki et al., 2021; Raworth, 2017).

If we approach cultural production mainly from the perspective of profit making and economic growth, it is most certainly connected – at least indirectly – to such forms of capitalist production that are anti-ecological per se. As the citations at the beginning of this section suggest, two main discursive lines can be distinguished here: the resolution tries to prove again and again (a) how the creative and cultural industries serve the economic growth of nations, and (b) how cultural and economic values (incl. technological and industrial innovations) are intertwined without any challenges. As mentioned, economic determinism and anthropocentrism converge in the resolution: a greater and well-functioning creative economy – and economic growth in general – is assumed to serve the interests of all humans. The ecological and environmental consequences of the creative economy are secondary concerns at best. In addition to being linked to the other aspects, the economy also determines them in the resolution; humans and their relations and subjectivities are valued, signified, and represented within the economic frame.

5.3. Methodological nationalism

While the climate crisis is a quintessentially global issue, cultural policy still relies on and strengthens the idea of nation states at the centre of politics. This is to be expected as the United Nations framework generally doesn’t address the tensions between global challenges and national interests head-on. The resolution reaffirms this state of affairs and, as mentioned above, blends it seamlessly with the capitalist market economisation of culture:

Recommitting to sustaining and supporting developing countries’ economies to transition progressively to higher productivity through high-value-added sectors, by promoting diversification, technological upgrading, research and innovation, including the creation of quality, decent and productive jobs, including through the promotion of cultural and creative industries, sustainable tourism, performing arts and heritage conservation activities, among others […]

Acknowledging that innovation is essential for harnessing the economic potential of each nation and the importance of supporting mass entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, which create new momentum for economic growth and job creation and expand opportunities for all, including women and youth […]

Stressing the importance of appropriate national policies aimed at promoting the diversity of cultural expression and advancing creativity for sustainable development. (United Nations, 2019, 2–3)

This kind of approach can be called “methodological nationalism”. It means the tendency of actors to assume that “the nation-state is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002, emphasis in original). In other words, it is a historically constructed post-Westphalian notion according to which nations and nation states are sovereign actors in solving political challenges and problems. Beck (2016) has criticised the concept in the context of current international politics concerning global problems. He claims that acute “cosmopoliticised” risks such as the climate crisis could give rise to “emancipatory catastrophism” – new normative horizons of common goods and a cosmopolitan outlook – if only we would be politically able to move beyond methodological nationalism. In the 21st century, not only the major challenges but also the “spaces of action” have become cosmopolitised. Beck’s view is that we can tackle these risks only with global political structures and policies, and by rethinking political agency from the level of the state to that of citizen-subjects. Emancipatory catastrophism could at best lead us to a new political approach of “methodological cosmopolitanism”. Latour (2018) makes a similar claim: we need to create political approaches and policies that are not grounded in national or global interests, but instead the earth. We globally need to learn new ways to live on and with the earth, and this is what cosmopolitan politics and agencies must be about.

How, then, does methodological nationalism appear in the resolution? As we can see from the citations at the beginning of this section, nation states are the ones that primarily benefit from the economic growth produced by the CCIs. They not only profit their economies, but also their nations in terms of prosperity, welfare and equality. Moreover, nation states and their national policies are the key actors of the resolution. It depends on them how all the economic and societal improvements generated by the creative economy will take place. The above contextualisation is not problematic only from the perspective of cultural sustainability and its basic values such as cultural diversity, but especially in terms of ecological sustainability, which is not national in its character.

6. Conclusions: towards a new planetary cultural policy

The United Nations promote the idea that the creative economy, through its constituent creative industries, will contribute to the transition towards sustainable development. However, the resolution on the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021 we have examined as a key exemplar of these efforts fails to convince that the claims it makes will indeed materialise. Though it would not be useful to argue that if only United Nations agencies would change their tune, we’d be able to shift away from the kinds of ideas embedded in this Resolution. Indeed, if the document were more radical and progressive, it would not be representative of dominant international organisations’ and states’ views and interests, and it would likely not gain much traction because it would not align with dominant discourses in these organisations or responsible state ministries – and most importantly, among consultants (De Beukelaer & Vlassis, 2019). However, the “non-progressiveness” and lack of radical views might well exist also because of the politics behind the documents and the power imbalances between the contributing actors, which impact the outcomes of the political negotiations and disputes. As known, some parties – e.g. strong and powerful nation states or international organisations – do have more say than others in the resolution making processes..

While it is necessary to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the climate crisis, it can be counterproductive to make assertions without a shred of evidence. To make matters worse, the resolution makes gratuitous claims that fly in the face of empirical evidence, as we have illustrated above. The resolution stumbles over several pitfalls.

First, we have shown that the resolution fails to define a clear and realistic target (i.e., what should be “sustainable”). This may seem self-evident, but the term has become such a catch-all for anything from the grossest forms of corporate greenwashing to the most genuinely committed actions. For the term to have any meaning, it needs to be defined unambiguously. This should include an articulation of whether it means environmental, social and cultural sustainability – or merely one of them – and a clear dissociation from the hegemonic growth-oriented economist view. The definition also needs to be pragmatic in the sense that it recognizes existing and outlines new broader political projects and their tools to challenge the current capitalist and anthropocentric political order of culture. One solution would be to start seriously thinking about culture and sustainability in relation to the post-growth “safe operating space” and “doughnut economy” (Raworth, 2017; cf. Jackson, 2009), in that they offer more practical narratives and are clearer on what is needed and what can’t be exceeded.

Second, the resolution’s objectives and methods remain entirely captured within the doxa of “green growth”. This is not the, but merely a blueprint for climate action – and perhaps not the most credible one at that (Hickel & Kallis, 2019). As “green growth” remains the dominant framework for policies, explicitly recognising it as one among many competing visions of the future is all-important when working at the intersection between art, culture and creativity in relation to climate futures.

Third, both UNCTAD and UNESCO remain fixed on their respective raisons d’être, without addressing the systemic challenge we face. This results in an impoverished articulation of what the future should be, which remains tone-deaf to the real challenge that underpins the climate crisis: how to ensure life in dignity and prosperity without wrecking the planet. In sum, the resolution we have studied is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability and the “organismal needs” (i.e. basic need that must be satisfied for an organism [human, animal, plant etc.] to realise its typical and special way and characteristics of life) of planetary well-being (Kortetmäki et al., 2021).

Notwithstanding our above criticisms of the resolution, the potential of art, culture and creativity to help confront the climate crisis is real. Its strength lies in a commitment to global environmental citizenship, which puts the planet before economic and anthropocentric or narrowly defined national, ethnic or religious group interests (Duxbury et al., 2017).1 It should help to address global issues with a cosmopolitan sensibility (De Beukelaer, 2019b). What we propose thus inherently challenges the normative foundations and horizons of public policy. Beyond shifting the normative ground on which policymaking builds, we would argue that it also requires a new political economy of creative work, which focuses on degrowth, revaluing craft and setting up a universal basic income. This should help lay the groundwork for a post-consumer society, in which the dignity and well-being of people and the planet take precedence over shareholder value.

Our suggestions might sound like wishful thinking. Which they are. Though so are the expected outcomes of the approaches suggested in the Resolution text. Policy texts inherently are wishful thinking. Contrary to this consensus-document, we believe that our suggested approach, “our” wishful thinking if you will, is more constructive. Which kind of “wishful thinking” one entertains is not just a mirage; it is helpful in offering both a semblance of a way out of this mess and a positive story that can garner public and political support. We are now at a point where the creative economy, as characterised in the Resolution, does neither.

In sum, our key argument is that the relation of culture and environment should be radically re-evaluated and re-defined when speaking and acting about sustainability and culture. Simply repackaging the creative industry policies of the past two decades as “sustainable” does little but further delay the much-needed rethinking of the future we want. To do that, we need a new kind of “planetary cultural policy” in which decision-making on culture always takes into account the environment, ecological sustainability and planetary boundaries per se. In addition, it must ideologically and conceptually understand culture as part of nature and vice versa. Finally, cultural policies should acknowledge that everything that human beings as cultural actors do has serious and true ecological implications, which also makes it a question of citizenship, identity and subjectivity. This would definitely confuse the already blurred boundaries of cultural policy as an administrative sector even more, but we think that it is an “obligatory passage point” (Callon, 1986) – i.e., the point of access to the irreversibly new understanding of relation between culture and sustainability that all key actors have to recognize and “go through”, if they want to participate in the process – if we really want to see culture as an important factor in sustainability policies and practices.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Miikka Pyykkönen: Writing – original draft. Christiaan De Beukelaer: Writing – original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

References

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Dr. Miikka Pyykkönen is a Professor on Cultural Policy in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He teaches bachelor and master students in the study programme Cultures, Communities and Change, and doctoral students in Cultural Policy doctoral studies. He is also a docent in Sociology at the University of Helsinki. His current research areas are cultural policy, international cultural policy, culture and sustainability, economization of culture, entrepreneurship and history of ethnopolitics.

Dr. Christiaan De Beukelaer is a Senior Lecturer in Culture & Climate at the University of Melbourne and a Global Horizons Senior Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He was previously a Marie Skłodowska-Curie – FIAS-FP COFUND Fellow in Necessary Utopias at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study at Aix-Marseille Université. His primary research project is Shipping in the Oceanic Commons: Regulation and Prefiguration (ClimateWorks Foundation). His most recent book Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping, published by Manchester University Press, is also available in French translation as Cargo à Voile: Une Aventure Militante pour un Transport Maritime Durable, published by Éditions Apogée. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.1

We do recognise that citizenship is always grounded in the lives of people, which are spatially and temporally bound. This offers up a further challenge of finding a space that connects the “planetary” and the individual, through multiple levels of social entanglement and political engagement.

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.