Sustainability, Culture and the Activities of the ICOMOS Climate Action Working Group

Activity: Talk or presentation typesInvited or keynote talk at national or international conference

Description

Climate change is one of the most serious threats to our global cultural heritage. Climate hazards like rising sea levels, increased precipitation and aridification both directly threaten sites, landscapes, museums, traditions and communities, and can also indirectly act as risk multipliers for existing pressures and stressors. Yet climate change is not like other threats. Traditional heritage tools, methodologies and approaches cannot respond to the scale of the challenge and there is a need for us to rethink our heritage practice to respond to this. This presentation will summarise some of the activities of the ICOMOS Climate Action Working Group which was established seven years ago to respond to the emerging climate emergency. It will provide some background to the working group and explore some key vision documents and drivers before focusing on examples from key projects which address a range of themes including heritage as a climate action asset, cultural heritage and climate science, and developing new heritage tools and methodologies. These emphasise the need for people and place-centred approaches which promote inclusivity and reflexive methodologies. They highlight the need to embrace plural values and knowledge systems to respond to the climate emergency and to align these efforts with other partners and approaches, in particular climate science. The presentation will then conclude by exploring some of the ongoing efforts of the Working Group; specifically, the creation of training resources which promote knowledge exchange and capacity building and making these, and other resources, available to the global heritage community.
Period16 Apr 2023
Event titleInternational Forum on Disaster Risk Management for Cultural Heritage Forum
Event typeConference
LocationTaipei, Taiwan, Province of ChinaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational