Today, the Science Museum is facing fresh controversy after it was called on to launch an investigation into the Director’s handling of a new sponsorship deal with the coal-producing conglomerate Adani. Drawing upon documents released under FOI rules, we have submitted a damning 34-page formal complaint to the Science Museum’s Board of Trustees setting out how links between Adani Green Energy – which is set to sponsor a new climate gallery opening in the Spring – and Adani’s coal business were repeatedly overlooked and dismissed.
At the same time, we’re launching this new film which lifts the lid on our latest research into this indefensible Adani sponsorship deal!
Have you ever wondered how a science museum can end up partnering with some of the world’s biggest polluters?
WATCH as the Director of the Science Museum reveals how to get away with greenwashing the world’s biggest private producer of coal!
Then take action by writing to the Science Museum and calling on it to drop Adani!
Our formal complaint builds upon earlier disturbing evidence we had uncovered, showing that the Science Museum’s Director had actively offered to “greenwash” Adani’s image by pitching the sponsorship of the new Energy Revolution gallery as a ‘global profiling opportunity’ that ‘most closely aligns with the company’s ambitions’ and offers ‘the greatest benefit’. Just last month, the ‘Global Coal Exit List’ confirmed that Adani is the world’s third largest developer of new coal mines and also the world’s biggest private producer of coal. The intervention comes as calls grow for a “global phase out” of fossil fuels to be agreed at the COP28 Climate Summit taking place in Dubai.
The formal complaint document sets out in detail how:
- Internal ‘Due Diligence’ reports put together by the museum before and after the sponsorship deal was signed identified instances of corruption, crimes and environmental damage. In an apparent attempt to deflect criticism, the museum cynically rebranded the deal as coming just from Adani’s renewables branch, ‘Adani Green Energy’. However, new investigations highlighting how Adani Green is directly linked to the conglomerate’s coal business have also been disregarded by the museum.
- The Director brushed off allegations made earlier this year by Hindenburg Research Group that Adani had engaged in ‘brazen stock manipulation’ and fraud, as part of ‘the biggest con in corporate history’. It also identified that all of the Adani Group companies are ‘intricately linked’, contrary to claims made by the museum’s Chair that Adani Green is a standalone firm. In the aftermath of the controversy, the Director emailed Adani to merely comment, “I hope you are well. I am sure the past few weeks have been rather torrid. Might we catch up on a few issues around the gallery opening later this year…?”
- Following a huge backlash to the announcement of the Adani deal in 2021, Director Ian Blatchford now appears to have been formally sidelined in the process for scrutinising sponsors, with his role replaced by a newly convened ‘Partnerships Panel’ and the museum’s ‘Group Ethics Policy’ rewritten accordingly.
- In pushing the deal through despite the clear red flags, Culture Unstained allege that the Director has likely breached the Museums Association’s ‘Code of Ethics’, standards set by the Charities Commission, as well as the museum’s own ‘Group Ethics Policy’.
You can read a summary of the complaint here as well as viewing extracts from the FOI documents we have uncovered!
The complaint calls for Director Ian Blatchford to be investigated and for the sponsorship deal with Adani to be dropped, ‘because the original decision was reached following a process that lacked legitimacy’. The controversy comes as the Board of Trustees are expected to hold their quarterly meeting this week and as current Chair Dame Mary Archer, who had publicly defended Adani in the media, prepares to hand over her role as Chair to Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, who will assume office as of January 2024.
Isobel Tarr, Co-director of Culture Unstained, said:
‘Something is seriously wrong at the top of the Science Museum. Both before and after the sponsorship was signed, the museum held evidence that ‘Adani Green Energy’ is intricately linked to the rest of the Adani Group and its growing coal business. Adani’s emissions, corruption and human rights impacts were repeatedly dismissed, while Adani’s “green” credentials were actively promoted by the museum’s leadership – this is a textbook example of “greenwashing”.
If due process had been followed and the evidence acted upon, Adani would never have been allowed to sponsor the Science Museum’s new climate gallery given the clear ethical conflict it creates. Our complaint sets out why the Board must drop the deal – and investigate how the Director was ever allowed to push through such a flawed and indefensible decision.’
Keval Bharadia, a member of South Asia Solidarity Group, a UK based network highlighting people’s struggles on the sub-continent, has said:
‘Communities across India and Australia have lost loved one whilst defending their forests and lands from Adani’s coal mining. The Science Museum management is well aware of decades long community resistance to Adani. Yet Blatchford himself opined to us that ‘Indians need coal, it’s good for India’, demonstrating an ideology tied to backwards and inaccurate energy pathways for the region along with its patronising and paternalistic racism.
Adani was exposed as the greatest corporate fraud in history. Rather than distancing themselves, Blatchford, offered words of consolation to Adani for a ‘torrid week’, demonstrating yet more callousness and indifference to the trail of death and destruction that Adani is responsible for.
The Science Museum should be utterly ashamed and Blatchford, a former banker, must be replaced with someone of higher moral and scientific standing who can end the disgraceful sponsorship with Adani. Someone who is capable of acting on the evidence of injustice and malpractice highlighted in their due diligence report and will put humanity and science before corporate cash and PR stunts.’
After the Adani sponsorship was announced in 2021 in the run-up to the COP26 Climate Summit, trustees Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Jo Foster resigned in protest and, subsequently, climate scientist Professor Chris Rapley and former Director of the Science Museum, resigned from its Advisory Group. Separately, young people, scientists, Indigenous leaders and educators have called on the museum to drop Adani.
The Science Museum has faced opposition to its fossil fuel sponsorships over many years and it continues to be sponsored by the Norwegian oil and gas firm Equinor, the company behind the controversial Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, and major polluter BP, which sponsors the museum’s ‘STEM Academy’ for training science educators.
Anya Nanning Ramamurthy, a member of the UK Student Climate Network London which has protested against fossil fuel sponsorship, has said:
‘It is outrageous that the Science Museum, a public body which should be providing for the public, not coddling a climate criminal, continues to defend its unethical decisions and, month after month, ignores the indisputable evidence against the Adani sponsorship. If the museum thinks a coal company which is continuing to expand its coal production is going to educate us on and lead the transition to green energy, then it is clear that the Museum has taken the side of reckless polluters. How can the museum be perceived as credible when they are so blatantly failing on what is arguably the most important science issue of our time?’
Since 2016, 16 major UK cultural institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Tate and Royal Shakespeare Company have ended sponsorship deals with major polluters such as BP and Shell. Leading science organisations, such as Amsterdam’s NEMO science museum, Kew Gardens and Edinburgh Science Festival have also cut their ties to fossil fuel producers, with the latter commenting in 2019 that:
‘Whilst we see change happening in the oil and gas sector and appreciate that the demands on them are complex, we are of the view that the sector is not moving fast enough to meet the IPCC targets and that there is a conflict between their behaviour and the underlying science.’
Culture Unstained 