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Sustainability and Climate Action Strategy

The Sustainability and Climate Action Strategy highlights the actions that the NFSA is taking towards a more sustainable future.

Custodianship

The First Nations principle of custodianship of Country guides our approach to environmental sustainability. Custodianship centres care, interconnectedness, and shared communal responsibility within our program of strategic and practical approaches to climate action.

Custodianship links our commitment to conserving the earth and its natural resources to our mission as an audiovisual archive to collect and preserve Australian culture, stories and memories and to our responsibility to care for the physical locations in which we work that include both land and heritage buildings.

Custodianship commits us to a holistic approach, understanding our work and its impacts on our communities, non-human kin, and the land as a living entity within the system of Country.

With Country as our teacher, we take a long-term view, knowing that health and healing will come given the right conditions of care. 

A diagram showing Elements of Country with First Nations circular symbols for Sky, Wind, Water, Deep and Non-human kin — We often see ourselves as separate from Country. Learning to be a custodian requires changing our practices and world view. Looking through the lens of Country and its multiple elements shifts our perspective and invites us to see ourselves as inseparable from and inhabited by Country. If we listen deeply to the needs of Country and each other, we can learn and grow as a collective and create a better future.
**Image credit**: Yerrabingin

Our strategies

The NFSA has developed three key strategies to pave the way for a more sustainable, regenerative future.

Question everything: in everything we do, we keep the question of sustainability alive.
Touch the Earth lightly: we implement and evolve sustainable practices, processes and tools.
Make it count: We measure and report our progress and achievements and exchange knowledge and inspiration, including using the collection.

Download the strategy

Download the Sustainability and Climate Action Strategy 2024 to 2026 (PDF)

Sustainability at the NFSA

Discover events and programming at the NFSA that bring people together to share knowledge and reflect on our place in the natural world and the practical steps we’re taking towards a more sustainable future. Learn more about Sustainability at the NFSA