Managing climate change risk: the case of the Italian Churches

Abstract

In a world of increasing and worse and worse climate events, there is an urgent need to find how to manage the climate change risk and make cultural heritage more resilient. Given the relevant threat represented by climate-related events, this paper aims to analyze the role of insurance in safeguarding cultural heritage from natural disasters. The focus is on Italian Churches seen as a particular case of study. Taking into consideration the characteristics of the managing risk strategy, we use a value-belief-norm approach and a decision tree analysis to evaluate the efficiency of the governance scheme adopted. In the case examined of the Italian Churches, the strategy is mainly based on a private insurance contract characterized by a double track, local and national, to reach the important goal of the full coverage of all churches. We conclude that cultural heritage can drive climate action and the originality of the Italian Churches strategy can represent a benchmark in this field.

Policy Recommendations for Integrating Resilience into the Management of Cultural Landscapes

“…According to Fatori'c and Seekamp, barriers to cultural resource resilience can be categorized along four dimensions, including (i) institutional, (ii) technical, (iii) financial, and (iv) social barriers, and increasing research on climate adaptation strategies and impacts on cultural heritage characteristics, as well as collaboration among multi-level actors, are among the primary requirements for overcoming these barriers [67]. Other academics argue that policies targeting disaster prevention and preparedness need to be changed to meet the transformation of heritage within the era of climate change [68]. In addition, institutional issues, such as a lack of cross-sectoral integration, are still problematic.…”

“…Therefore, teamwork and integration are frequently mentioned as fundamental to successful responses and resilience. Enhancing resilience can be encouraged via multi-sector partnerships, which involve collaboration between various business, governmental and organization actors [68].…”

Enhancing Resilience of Cultural Heritage in Historical Areas: A Collection of Good Practices

“…The importance of resilience is not to return simply to the pre-disaster state, but to be adaptive and to adjust to changing circumstances, collaboratively [3]. Resilience does not only concern the capability of coping with disasters (i.e., instantaneous resilience), but it needs to include the ability to reconstruct and recover quickly (i.e., dynamic resilience) [31]. Moreover, resilience towards extreme events is increasingly acknowledged as a learning process that must consider cultural, social, economic, and environmental dimensions through local knowledge and social memory [32].…”

“…As already pointed out by a number of scholars, e.g., [31,33], there is an increasing interest in resilience together with the need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in assessing cultural heritage and resources. As pointed out by Fatorić and Egberts [25], scholars have recently started to investigate the community and stakeholder groups' perceptions of heritage values or benefits subject to climate changing risks [7].…”

“…According to Fatorić and Seekamp [21], barriers to cultural resource adaptation can be grouped according to four dimensions (i.e., institutional, technical, financial, and social barriers), and to increase research on climate adaptation strategies and impacts to cultural heritage characteristics, as well as collaboration among multi-level actors, are among the main needs to overcome the barriers. Other researchers focusing on policies are arguing that changes are needed to those policies addressing the prevention and preparedness phases to disasters, to accommodate various forms and stages of transformation of heritage in an era of climatic change [5,6,16,30,31].…”