The Price of Air: When Carbon Costs Cloud Cultural Exchange
The other night over dinner, a director of a performing arts institute in Asia shared something that caught me off guard.
She had recently invited a European performance group to Taiwan. As part of their proposal, the company added a “carbon footprint fee”—an extra charge to account for the environmental impact of their flights. But the fee didn’t go to any environmental agency. It wasn’t a government tax or a verified offset. It was a charge the company kept for itself, citing internal sustainability policy.
“When we invite someone from Europe,” she said, puzzling, “we have to account for this in our budget.”
When did clean air become something only some of us could afford?
We live in a time when everyone is trying to do the right thing. Climate change is urgent. The arts, like every sector, are learning to be more responsible. But somewhere along the way, the good intention of sustainability risks becoming a gatekeeping tool.
Especially when the people setting the rules are the ones least affected by them.
—A Sky Not Shared Equally
Historically, the Global North—Europe, the U.S., and other industrialized nations—built their wealth by burning coal, exploiting labor, and extracting resources from the rest of the world. The skies we all now share were already thick with emissions long before most countries in the Global South had even finished rebuilding from colonial rule.
Today, those same countries are being asked to bear the moral weight of sustainability—with fewer resources, smaller budgets, and less negotiating power.
It’s like arriving late to a feast, only to be told you must now pay extra for the crumbs because the food was cooked using too much fire.
—Sustainability or Symbol?
The idea of charging for carbon emissions sounds noble. But when that fee stays in the hands of the company—rather than going to a verified environmental initiative—it starts to feel less like climate action and more like climate branding.
Worse, it places the burden on the very people trying to build bridges. Directors, curators, and producers in Asia, Africa, Latin America—often working with limited funds—now have to choose between paying a premium or being left out of “ethical” partnerships.
That’s not sustainability. That’s a toll booth on the road to cultural exchange.
—A More Honest Exchange
What would a fairer model look like?
• If you charge for carbon, show where it goes. Share receipts, link to your offset partner, invite transparency.
• Better yet, absorb part of the cost as a European company with greater resources—and treat the rest as a conversation, not a condition.
• Design cultural collaborations that don’t just export values, but exchange perspectives—including ways of being sustainable that come from Indigenous, Eastern, or ancestral knowledge.
• And remember that for many in the Global South, survival has always been sustainable—reusing, repairing, making do. Sustainability isn’t new—it just wasn’t branded.
Cultural exchange should feel like a meeting of hands across the table—not a transaction weighed down by unequal terms.
We’re all trying to breathe cleaner air. But if only some of us are allowed to fly, speak, or move freely while others pay the surcharge, then we’re not moving toward equity—we’re just renaming the old systems.
So the next time we talk about sustainability in the arts, please ask:
Sustainable for whom? And at what cost?
