Sir Tim Laurence
Science Museum
Exhibition Road, South Kensington
London SW7 2DD
23 November 2024
Dear Sir Tim,
We are a community of British scientists who have long opposed the Science Museum Group’s (SMG) acceptance of sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies that defy international demands to halt new fossil fuel exploration and extraction. Among our concerns is the museum’s partnership with coal magnate Adani, which has provided a platform to greenwash his company’s reputation at the expense of the Science Museum’s integrity.
This week, U.S. prosecutors indicted Adani and executives of Adani Green Energy for their alleged role in a bribery scheme linked to a solar power plant (1). This is the latest in a series of scandals flagged in the SMG’s own due diligence report on Adani (2). Despite these findings, the SMG defended its deal by claiming that Adani Green Energy operates independently from the broader Adani Group—a claim repeatedly disproven (3), including by this latest investigation.
Reports suggest your response to these recent allegations is that you are “monitoring developments”(4). We hope this is not another instance of Trustees overlooking issues with Adani Green Energy, in violation of SMG’s own ethics policy(5), which states: “SMG will not accept donations, sponsorship or grants where the donor has acted, or is believed to have acted, illegally in the acquisition of funds or where there are concerns of fraud, money laundering, or other financial crime.”
Since the resignation of two SMG Trustees(6) over Adani’s sponsorship of the Energy Revolution gallery, scientists, journalists, artists and the charity ‘Save the Children’, have refused to participate in Science Museum events(7,8). The museum will likely continue to see similar blacklisting from these professionals and charities until ties with Adani are broken.
More than three years after the sponsorship’s announcement, Adani’s association continues to tarnish the reputation of Britain’s leading science institution. We urge you to end SMG’s relationship with Adani, commit to partnerships founded on integrity, and champion the science-based case for stopping new fossil fuel extraction, to restore SMG’s credibility, which is essential for inspiring future scientists.
Yours sincerely,
Scientists for XR
scientistsforxr@protonmail.com
ToxicBonds.org letter to the Science Museum Group https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tgfdsZYP4VWkaYHBpfV5KI2skziVrmvg/view
https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/SMG-Ethics-Policy-June-2024.pdf