Cultural Landscapes and their Critical Role in Climate Change

Climate change and its resulting natural disasters, civil strife, wars and ethnic cleansing will leave many communities and their cultural heritage behind (ICOMOS CCHWG 2019): disconnected from their heritage as a result of displacement or involuntary migration, loss of intangible heritage resulting from involuntary displacement and/or ethnic cleansing, and the loss of tangible heritage destroyed by natural disasters, inundation or the cultural annihilation of war and occupation (World Heritage Center 2007; ICOMOS CCHWG 2019). How people respond to disasters, and the rate at which they recover, is substantially influenced by both their culture and their cultural heritage (Shrotryia 2013; Few et al 2021). Culture and heritage impact all aspects of society, but particularly attachments to place in the form of tangible and intangible heritage and social cohesion (Gu and Ryan 2008; Abunnasr, Hamin and Brabec 2015). While the direct effects of climate change are being studied in areas such as building conservation, archaeological resources, World Heritage sites (Blankholm 2009), and the World Heritage Convention itself (Colette 2007; Terrill 2008), what is lacking in the discussion of cultural resilience is an analysis of the impacts of cultural heritage on landscapes, both urban and rural. It is only in the revisions to the 2007 World Heritage Policy in 2019-2020 that cultural landscapes were featured in the climate change discussion (ICOMOS CCHWG 2019). Cultural landscapes are the medium of heritage: 1. as the manifestation of place and place-making in communities; and 2. the attitudes, values and practices that govern a culture and are reflected in its land and urban patterns (Rottle and Alberti 2008). They are critical to the security and identification people seek under the trauma of disasters. Incorporating an awareness of culture and the physical manifestations of cultural landscapes in the disaster planning and relief process is the key to a sustainable and adaptable relationship between humans and their natural environments (Baden and Baldwin 1995). In 2019, ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) presented “The Future of our Pasts” report to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The report was a precursor to the drafting of the 2021 World Heritage Committee’s revised Policy Document on Climate Change. This session will analyze the results of the 2019 report and the proposed 2021 UNESCO Policy Document in the context of cultural landscapes. The session will utilize the UNFCCC context for adaptation and resilience, to structure the results of a meta-analysis of the literature on cultural landscapes and climate change. on the importance of cultural landscapes in climate change adaptation and disaster management. The analysis of the literature, prepared by an international consortium of landscape and heritage researchers for ICOMOS, identifies the current state of the research and the knowledge gaps that will require additional efforts to more fully understand the nexus between climate change and cultural landscapes. Abunnasr, Yaser, Elisabeth M. Hamin and Elizabeth Brabec. 2015. Windows of Opportunity: Addressing Climate Uncertainty through Adaptation Plan Implementation, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 58(1): 135. Baden, John A. and Peter L. Baldwin. 1995. How Property Rights Account for Environmental Sustainability, Human Ecology Review 2(1): 22. Blankholm, H. P. 2009. Long-Term Research and Cultural Resource Management Strategies in Light of Climate Change and Human Impact, Arctic Anthropology 46(1-2): 17. Brabec, Elizabeth and Elizabeth S Chilton. 2015. Toward an Ecology of Cultural Heritage Change Over Time 5(2): 266-285. Colette, Augustin. 2007. Case Studies on Climate Change and World Heritage (UNESCO World Heritage Centre). Few, R., D. Spear, C. Singh, M. G. L. Tebboth, J. E. Davies and M. C. Thompson-Hall (2021). Culture as a mediator of climate change adaptation: Neither static nor unidirectional. WIREs Climate Change 12(1): e687. Gu, Huimin and Chris Ryan. 2008. Place Attachment, Identity and Community Impacts of Tourism—the Case of a Beijing Hutong, Tourism Management 29(4): 637 ICOMOS Climate Change and Heritage Working Group (CCHWG). 2019. The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging cultural heritage in climate action. Paris: ICOMOS and the Center for Heritage and Society. Rottle, Nancy and Marina Alberti. 2008. Climate Change and Place, Places 20(2): 4. Shrotryia, Vijay Kumar. 2013. Culture, Gross National Happiness and Disasters: Strategies for Preparedness and Management of Disasters in Bhutan, Journal of Integrated Disaster Risk Management 3(3): 170. Terrill, Greg. 2008. Climate Change: How Should the World Heritage Convention Respond?, International Journal of Heritage Studies 14(5): 388. World Heritage Center (2007). Climate Change and World Heritage, A. Collette (ed). Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Center