Climate change is a critical issue for heritage studies. Sites, objects and ways of life all are coming under threat, requiring alternative management, or requiring specific climate change adaptation. Heritage is key to interpreting the societal significance of climate change; notions (and images) of the past are crucial to our understanding of the present, and are used to prompt actions that help society define and achieve a specific and desired future.
Relatively little attention has been paid to the critical intersections between heritage and climate change. The Future of Heritage as Climates Change frames the intellectual context within which heritage and climate change can be examined, presenting cases and sub-fields in which the heritage-climate change nexus is being examined and provides synthetic analyses through five overarching themes:
- The heritage of change among coastal communities: liminality and the politics of engagement
- Dwelling materials: processes and possibilities;
- Environmental heritage: meanings of the past – prospects for the future;
- Blurring the boundaries of nature and culture: the politics of anticipation;
- Climate change and heritage practice: adaptation and resilience.
The Future of Heritage as Climates Change provides scholars, managers, policy makers and students with a much needed examination of heritage and climate change to help make critical decisions in the next several decades.
Table of Contents:
Introduction - Heritage and climate change: the future is not the past,
David C Harvey & Jim Perry
Part 1: Blurring the Boundaries of Heritage and Climate Change: Creative Ontologies and Consequences
Narratives of change on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site
Rose Ferraby
Heritage and climate change: a fatal affair
Werner Krauß
Climate and Cultural Heritage: an Experiment with the ‘Weather Memory Bank',
Georgina Endfield and Simon Naylor
Diverse Epistemic Traditions in Transformative Climate Change Research and Adaptation: Heritage and Legacy
Andrea Déri and Janardhanan Sundaresan
"We now have a name for some of the big changes happening on our Bubu [country]". The role of Indigenous knowledge for the management of cultural landscapes in a changing climate. A case study of the Kuku Nyungkal people from the Queensland Wet Tropics, Australia
Leanne Cullen-Unsworth and Kirsten Maclean
Climate change and the changing nature of conservation
Stephanie Lavau
Historical chestnut cultures, climate and rural landscapes in the Apennines
Roberta Cevasco, Diego Moreno, Ross Balzaretti and Charles Watkins
Part 2: Creative Responses to Heritage and Climate Change Relations: Processes, Policies and Possibilities
Heritage and climate change: organizational conflicts and conundrums
Diane Barthel-Bouchier
Heritage Development and Community Resilience: Insights for the Era of Climate Change
Daniel N. Laven
Strategies for Coping with the Wicked Problem of Climate Change: A Natural Heritage Perspective
Paul A. Gray, Christopher J. Lemieux, Thomas J. Beechey, J. Gordon Nelson, and Daniel J. Scott
Buffer mechanisms for managing diversity and World Heritage in the Cape Floral Region (South Africa) G. Palmer, K. Maree and J. Gouza
‘From dust to dust’: earth buildings, process and change
Louise Cooke
Relationships between climate change and built heritage: the case of dense urban cities in Hong Kong and China
Esther, H.K. Yung and Edwin, H.W. Chan
Taking the middle path to the coast: how community collaboration can help save threatened sites
Tom Dawson
Conclusion - Valuing the ever-changing past
Jim Perry & David C Harvey
About the Author :
David Harvey is Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. He has worked within the field of heritage studies for a number of years and his research has contributed to some key heritage debates.
Jim Perry is HT Morse Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota, USA. His current research focuses on climate change adaptation in UNESCO World Heritage sites, and on capacity development supporting an ecosystem management approach to water resources.
