Knowledge co-production in climate adaptation planning of archaeological sites

Abstract

Climate adaptation is a process for minimizing the risks of damage or loss to coastal archaeological sites. Yet, adaptation requires identifying and prioritizing among the diverse aspects of a site's significance, as not all sites can be simultaneously adapted due to financial and human capital constraints. Developing a measurement framework that can ascertain the relative significance between sites necessitates the collaboration of multiple perspectives, including experts who set policy and on-the-ground managers who must translate policy into practice while accounting for the management preferences of associated communities. This paper explores if a values-based process enables co-production of knowledge related to the significance of archeological sites. Specifically, this paper examines the influences of a workshop-conducted with diverse archaeological experts working for the U.S. National Park Service-on knowledge co-production and documents the extent of changes in experts' opinions using a prepost survey design. Findings suggest that the values-based approach applied during the workshop can have a positive impact on knowledge co-production among experts. Changes were found in experts' perceptions of the importance of various considerations influencing archaeological site prioritization, as well as of the extent to which uncertainties challenge archaeological preservation. This paper presents novel findings about the importance of knowledge co-production in relation to coastal archaeological site preservation and climate adaptation in the U.S. Prioritization considerations and challenges of various uncertainties assessed in this study can provide valuable insights for progress in climate change policy for cultural heritage both in the U.S and globally.

Adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts in the Netherlands: barriers, interdependencies, and strategies for overcoming them

“…implementing adaptation actions (Moser and Ekstrom 2010). As financial resources are finite and the scale of the changing environment and climate large, some developed countries such as the UK (Dawson et al 2020) and the USA (Fatorić and Seekamp 2019;Rockman et al 2016) have started to deal with decisions on the extent to which can they afford to adapt cultural heritage to climate change, and how to address an associated loss of heritage. In these contexts, it was argued that building and strengthening collaboration among diverse stakeholder and community groups, supporting climate change advocates within governments and among communities, and presenting a strong case that public and private investments in climate adaptation of cultural heritage can yield benefits for society, economies and environment could lessen the financial barrier, and help to promote climate adaptation action (Graham et al 2017;Heathcote et al 2017;Hollesen et al 2018).…”

“…To date, most research has focused on developing frameworks, tools, or methods to assess climate risks and vulnerabilities of diverse cultural heritage types (Fatorić and Seekamp 2017a). While these studies make a crucial step in recognising climate change risks and raising awareness, there have been limited efforts to understand the design of feasible adaptation measures, and the governance challenges encountered in implementation to increase cultural heritage resilience (Dupont and Van Eetvelde 2013;Fatorić and Seekamp 2019;Xiao et al 2019). Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify the different types of barriers that arise in the adaptation process in order to bridge the gap between climate change science and climate change adaptation planning and implementation for cultural heritage.…”

Historic preservation priorities for climate adaptation

“…2 For more information on Hurricane Florence and its damage in news, see https://psmag.com/environment/hurricane-florence-records-of-americas-slave -trade. policy decisions (Arvai et al, 2001;Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2019;Hermans and Cunningham, 2018;Williams and Fang, 2018). Value-based approaches differ from traditional alternative-or action-based approaches in which management actions are identified and weighted without explicitly incorporating stakeholders' values (Williams and Fang, 2018), whereas value-based approaches place emphasis on integrating multiple actors' values with technical expertise and scientific information to foster more transparent, inclusive and holistic decisions (Espinosa-Romero et al, 2011;Wilson and McDaniels, 2007).…”

“…In a marine spatial planning-context, Gee et al (2017) suggested a cultural uniqueness as one criterion for determining the significance of cultural features, with cultural uniqueness determined by assessing if a feature is unique within a region or if similar features exist in the same region. Similarly, "rarity" has been considered in archeological frameworks for coastal adaptation planning (e.g., Dawson, 2013;Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2019;Pollard-Belsheim et al, 2014). Given the importance of this consideration for prioritizing coastal adaptation, more research is needed to expand upon the measurement of uniqueness for policy guidance and decision-making.…”

Coastal heritage, global climate change, public engagement, and citizen science

“…Central to prioritization is the idea of ranking sites on the basis of importance, although this requires agreement on what makes heritage valuable or significant (10). Fatorić and Seekamp (23) found that, in addition to the "immediacy of climate change threats," heritage managers identified the most important factors in prioritizing work as places with "high scientific value," "uniqueness or rarity," and "national importance." These three considerations are connected with the intrinsic value of the site.…”