Global warming and its consequences are increasingly destroying livelihoods. Extreme weather events hit countries in Central America particularly hard. 

However, the countries of the Global North are mainly responsible for global warming. That's why our climate tour at the LWL Museum of Archaeology and Culture in Herne begins with the first exhibit from the 19th century that represents the burning of coal in the heart of Berlin. A total of 13 exhibits tell of climate (in)justice and how global warming today determines the lives of people in Central America.  

• A church window from the completely demolished village of Immerath, for example, is representative of opencast lignite mining and resistance to it.  Resistance that indigenous communities in Guatemala are also putting up against the nickel mines that are destroying their homeland. 
• A "farm animal" ear tag tells of opaque soy supply chains, pesticides on indigenous land and rainforest deforestation with fatal consequences for the global climate. 
• The dial of a scale we brought back from our media trip to Honduras in July 2023 is evidence of a landslide. Mud and debris buried the Honduran village of La Reina in 2020 and with it 300 houses, stores, schools, fields and four churches. All residents survived but had to leave their belongings behind. The fact that heavy rainfall is becoming more frequent and can trigger landslides is a consequence of the earth's heating. 

Successful cooperation 

We would like to thank the LWL Museum of Archaeology and Culture very much for the opportunity to dedicate a tour entirely to the topics of climate crisis and climate justice. In the special exhibition "Modern Times - Archaeological Finds of the Modern Age and their Stories", the museum is for the first time dealing with this most recent field of work in archaeology. 

The exhibition, including the climate tour, can be seen from September 8, 2023 to August 18, 2024 during the museum's opening hours:

Closed on Mondays
Tuesday Wednesday Friday:
9 a.m. to 5 p.m
Thursday:
9 a.m. to 7 p.m
Saturday, Sunday, public holiday:
11 a.m. to 6 p.m

Note: The climate tour can be visited in its entirety (including the audio tour) from September 19, 2023.

More information can be found here: https://www.sonder exhibition-herne.lwl.org/de/

Head photos:

Caption (left)  

A hillside full of rubble and overgrown ruins is where one of the exhibits was found: The dial on this scale may once have belonged to a fruit stand before a landslide destroyed the village of La Reina in Honduras. 

Caption (right) 

In this display case at the LWL Museum of Archaeology and Culture, the dial of the scale now bears witness to climate change-related extreme weather events and associated losses.