An integrated approach for assessing the vulnerability of World Heritage Sites to climate change impacts

Abstract

One of the most difficult problem facing those responsible for managing World Heritage Sites (WHS) is climate change, as it poses continuous new challenges to the conservation of cultural heritage. Moreover, as our climate continues to change our cultural heritage will potentially be exposed to diverse pressures and potentially to risks not previously experienced. Thus, management practices will need to be tailored in order to include climate change impacts. For climate change impacts to be incorporated into preservation frameworks and management practices from government policy level down to the practice in the field, data, information and assessment methods need to be available at a scale relevant to decisionmakers. This paper presents an integrated vulnerability assessment methodology and applies it to three UNESCO cultural WHS in Europe. Through this process, semi-structured interviews were conducted with academics and experts in the management and conservation of cultural heritage, as well as with the managers and coordinators of WHS. The incorporation of bottom-up knowledge in the assessment process allowed for an understanding of the sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the sites, two components of vulnerability that are not given sufficient attention and ignored, respectively, in typical topdown climate change impact assessments. In particular, the interviews elucidated the determinants that enable or constrain the capacity to adapt, i.e., resources, including technical, economic and human; information and awareness; management capacity; learning capacity; leadership; communication and collaboration; and governance; with the lack of resources most commonly mentioned as the determinant impeding adaptation. 'Information and awareness' and 'management capacity' are determinants that were not previously identified in the field of cultural heritage. The former stresses the need to disseminate the results of scientific research for their incorporation in the management of heritage sites. Vulnerability assessments such as those performed in this paper can be used to target interventions to protect and strengthen the resilience of cultural heritage to climate change impacts.

Historic Environmental Vulnerability Evaluation of Traditional Villages Under Geological Hazards and Influencing Factors of Adaptive Capacity: A District-Level Analysis of Lishui, China

“…Its natural exposure to increased environmental pressures and historical protection requirements often limit the enhancement of its material performance [28]. Thus, many scholars have begun fragility research of the historic environment, investigating various disasters including climate disasters [29], geological disasters [30], fires [31], earthquakes [32,33], floods [34] as well as marine and aeolian processes [35].…”

“…However, these studies mainly focused on subjects with a high level of historic environmental protection such as world heritage sites [29,30] and famous historical and cultural cities [33]. Relatively little concern has been expressed for the historic environmental vulnerability of villages, especially traditional villages.…”

“…Among these, the sensitivities of materials (S1) [24,26] and structures (S2) [18,20], as well as their ages (S3) [26] are commonly used indicators of the disaster resistance of traditional buildings. Historic landscape elements are similar; however, because they do not involve structural issues, the material sensitivity and the age of objects are frequently used variables [29]. Thus, the higher the sensitivities of both material and structure, and the older the objects, the more susceptible they will be to geological disasters.…”

Monitoring Climate Change in World Heritage Properties: Evaluating Landscape-Based Approach in the State of Conservation System

“…Accordingly, it follows recognising that in addition to 'the overarching objective of safeguarding the outstanding universal values of WH properties', these properties must 'serve as laboratories where monitoring, mitigation and adaptation processes can be applied, tested and improved' [5]. However, recent studies [3,6,7] found that heritage conservation practice has primarily focused on reactive measures that are taken after climate change impacts occur; these impacts include damage or loss to heritage properties [6,8,9].…”

Pyrgi: analysis of possible climatic effects on a coastal archaeological site

“…Due to changes in climatic conditions demonstrated in recent years, with a consequent increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena, hydrogeological instability is causing increasing damages to cultural heritage [4] [5] [10]. This has a potential impact on the built and landscape heritage, which frequently fails to have appropriate protection systems [14] [18] [19] [20].…”