We believe that arts, culture and heritage constitute an invaluable resource to help communities reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and strengthen adaptive capacity.
The Climate Heritage Network is a global network whose members are committed to mobilising arts, culture and heritage to address climate change and support communities in achieving the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. The Network seeks to scale up culture-based climate action and to foreground the cultural dimensions of climate policy through coordination and cooperation among its members.
CHN members work with all types of culture including arts and creative industries; museums and libraries; landscapes, heritage sites and archaeology; and intangible heritage, traditional knowledge and Indigenous ways of knowing. Network members include:
- Arts, culture and heritage units of government at all levels.
- Indigenous Peoples’ governments, representative bodies and organisations.
- Site management agencies.
- NGOs and other organisations.
- Universities and research organisations.
- Design firms, artists and other businesses.
The Network was conceived in 2018 at the Climate Heritage Mobilization at the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit and was launched in October 2019 at the Climate Heritage Network Global Launch. Interested organisations can join by signing or endorsing the Climate Heritage Network MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). The MOU does not introduce new legal constraints on participants but does as signatories to demonstrate a clear commitment to support mobilization of the cultural heritage sector for climate action.
The Climate Heritage Network Vision
Despite profound connections between climate change and culture, today there are thousands of arts, culture and heritage actors and advocates whose talents have not yet been mobilized on climate change issues, including administrators, anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, artists, conservators, curators, engineers, historians, librarians, musicians, urban planners, site managers, as well as scientists, researchers, teachers and scholars and carriers of indigenous knowledge and local wisdom whose talents have not yet been mobilized on climate change issues. This is so even in jurisdictions that have made ambitious climate action pledges via networks like the Under 2 Coalition. The Climate Heritage Network aims to flip that paradigm.
Cultural Heritage is a Climate Action Issue. Climate Action is a Cultural Heritage Issue.
Heritage and Carbon Mitigation
The Paris Agreement reflects a global consensus on the need to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions and achieve a net zero carbon future. The remit of cultural heritage is vast. Keys include sensitively reducing the carbon footprint of the historic built environment; promoting a culture of reuse to conserve embodied energy; promoting traditional, low-carbon land use patterns; guiding the siting of renewable energy; and championing traditional knowledge with just governance in the use of forests and oceans as carbon sinks.
Heritage and Adaptation
21st century heritage administration includes both addressing the impacts of climate change and planning for adaptation, contributing to disaster risk reduction, and helping to leverage heritage values to enhance communities’ adaptive capacities and reduce vulnerability via participatory approaches guided by science and traditional, indigenous and local knowledge. It means championing people-based approaches in local and regional adaptation planning and a redoubled focus on planning for uncertainty; monitoring vulnerability; open data; and inter-sectoral approaches.
Planning for Loss and Damage
Climate change is already resulting in loss and destruction of sites and values. What impacts can’t be avoided? How do we prepare for loss including slow-onset events and integrate into comprehensive risk management approaches? How do we safeguard heritage amidst climate displacement and learn to better use heritage as a tool for social integration? What are the latest paradigms for measuring and insuring against “non-economic losses” like loss of culture? Understanding these issues is the new normal for heritage administration.
Heritage and Climate Science and Communication
Heritage drives climate ambition and action. Heritage anchors a sense of place — and every place has a climate story. Capacity building works best when its culturally appropriate. Traditional knowledge and heritage values hold contemporary uses as locally-adapted climate capacities and technology. Heritage sites are valuable observatories of climate processes while heritage sciences tell us how climate has changed and how to use this information to establish and understand shifting baselines and past adaptation efforts.
Photo credit – clockwise: © 2018 The Associated Press (Commuters ride a “Metrobus” rapid transit bus as night falls in Mexico City. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)); (c) 2018 The Associated Press (Diorama depicting the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque (1881), after the 2014 tsunami at the Tsunami Museum in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Jody Kurash)); (c) 2018 The Associated Press (The Statue of Liberty stands beyond parts of a brick walkway damaged in Superstorm Sandy on Liberty Island in New York. With scientists forecasting sea levels to rise by anywhere from several inches to several feet by 2100, historic structures and coastal heritage sites around the world are under threat (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)); (c) (Gloria, 6, at Newtok village cemetery (Alaska) which is located on the other side of Keflavik (Newtok) River, where the old village was situated many decades ago. Once suitable for building houses, the melting of the permafrost means the swampy ground is no longer good for housing. (Vlad Sokhin / Panos))
"التراث والمناخ" هو موضوع هذا العام لليوم العالمي للمعالم والمواقع،. أصبح التغير المناخي أحد أهم وأسرع التهديدات نموًا للتراث الثقافي.
لقراءة المزيد:
https://www.unesco.org/en/culture-and-climate-change
#اليونسكو
#اليوم_العالمي_للمعالم_والمواقع
#حب_الأردن
#التراث_الثقافي
#التغير_المناخي #الثقافة
🕌🏼🗺️🕍
‘Heritage and Climate’ is this year’s theme of the International Day for Monuments and Sites. #ClimateChange has become one of the most significant and fastest growing threats to cultural heritage.
Read more👉 https://www.unesco.org/en/culture-and-climate-change
#MonumentsDay
#WorldHeritage
#ShareCulture
If the #ClimateEmergency was taken seriously it would happen! https://twitter.com/RobChapman_Co/status/1515281371643662337
Iraq’s ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/15/iraq-ancient-buildings-destroyed-by-climate-change-salt-sandstorms?CMP=share_btn_tw
Climate change and cultural heritage #climateheritage https://twitter.com/jaafarjotheri/status/1515065582399410180
