Cloud forest in Guatemala conserved with the support of Hauser & Wirth donation. Photo: Dr. Christopher Jordan/Global Wildlife Conservation
Strategic Climate Funds
As a core element of our sustainability plan, we support Strategic Climate Funds. This approach reflects current research by Art to Acres and other environmental advisors to the GCC to differentiate between conventional carbon offsetting and funds that focus on eco-system preservation and positive impacts to communities directly affected by climate change. Importantly, our support of Strategic Climate Funds conserves existing forests and is backed up by climate justice initiatives.
This support is in conjunction with the reduction of our impacts using lower carbon logistics initiatives that target our main source of emissions (shipping and packing) and our investment in internal changes, namely energy efficiency programs.
Two examples of high impact Strategic Climate Funds that have received our donations include Art to Acres and ClientEarth.
Hauser & Wirth and Art to Acres: Supporting Permanent Cloud Forest Conservation in Guatemala
Over 4,700 acres of old growth forest have been conserved by gallery efforts.
Beginning in 2020, we have funded carbon-dense forest conservation through our partnership with Art to Acres, a non-profit that supports permanent forest conservation in high biodiversity regions to benefit local communities. Through this partnership, Hauser & Wirth and our artists supported the conservation of 4,700 acres of cloud forest in Guatemala, a contribution matched by Global Wildlife Conservation, ensuring preservation of irreplaceable ecosystems.
World Earth Day Prints
We have partnered with our artists as part of an ongoing initiative to raise funds through the sale of prints. This series has featured Jenny Holzer (2020), Rashid Johnson (2021), Gary Simmons (2022) and Angel Otero (2023) , resulting in the preservation of an area of cloud forest in Northern Highlands of Guatemala. The forest will be presented for National Park status, ideally to be granted by 2025 and this conservation act means Art to Acres are closer to protecting the last large remaining cloud forest in Central America.
Jenny Holzer, delicately interconnected, 2020 © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
About Art to Acres
We are proud to support Art to Acres, a not-for-profit that connects the art community with permanent climate-based forest conservation and the protection of historic carbon reserves. The organization has orchestrated land conservation on behalf of approximately 50 artists, including gallery artists Rashid Johnson, Mika Rottenberg, George Condo and Jenny Holzer, and 30 museums or institutions such as the MCA Chicago, Guggenheim, Kunstmuseum Bonn and MOCA.
To date, the initiative has supported the conservation of 22 million acres of forests. 100% of funds go to the land conservation acquisition or governmental designation selected; administrative and travel costs are paid by the non-profit board and partnering conservation non-profits. Funds receive project-dependent matching funds from partner foundations and projects focus on local leadership, indigenous-led conservation and carbon-dense landscapes. The non-profit organizes the due diligence, project research and matching funds to support conservative and scalable results.
Photo: Dr. Christopher Jordan/Global Wildlife Conservation
Hauser & Wirth and ClientEarth
Our donations to ClientEarth have directly supported the establishment of ClientEarth’s US operation.
ClientEarth’s focus in the US is climate finance. Using their legal expertise, they are striving to bring businesses in line with the Paris Agreement, to speed the shift of corporate investments and financial flows away from fossil fuels. They work in partnership with other NGOs and fill a unique space in the US non-profit community, by addressing climate change through the lens of corporate, financial, and securities law and litigation.
To do this, they focus on three key areas:
Greenwashing: establishing accountability for misleading claims around gas and carbon offsets
Shifting investments of major dual-registered (US/Asia) corporations away from fossil fuels
Using corporate law to ensure companies are properly assessing and reporting climate risk
About ClientEarth
ClientEarth's team of lawyers, scientists and policy experts have used their environmental expertise to achieve powerful change, from winning court cases over illegal air pollution, protecting Indigenous Rights, promoting climate justice, building capacity for people to use the law to protect the places they live from environmental degradation to writing laws to ensure that there will still be fish in the sea in the future.
