Culture powering the Race to Resilience

Culture and heritage have immense potential to contribute to adaptation pathways for communities. Indeed, the only explicit attention given to cultural heritage in the Paris Agreement is in the section on adaptation, which notes that adaptive action should be inclusive of  traditional knowledge, knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, and local knowledge systems wherever possible. Indigenous Knowledge and other endogenous ways of knowing can particularly be a resource in ecosystem-based adaptation, if taken forward in a rights-based framework. Relating past adaptability to environmental change to current issues can support present and future adaptation.

Culture is central to understanding and implementing adaptation actions, be they human behavioural change, institutional change, or technological adjustments. The identification of risk, decisions about responses, and means of implementation are all mediated by culture. Highlighting the role of heritage in social integration and inclusion supports adaptation, especially by engaged community stewardship and participatory inventorying and cultural mapping. Overlooking these cultural dimensions can lead to maladaptive outcomes that potentially undermine the resilience of communities.

Culture-based strategies strengthen resilience in many ways, including by supporting a multiplicity of social networks and diversity of knowledge systems; promoting both interconnectedness and local self-sufficiency (e.g., use of traditional, local materials); promoting equity and mobilization of values that support justice and inclusion; and leveraging creativity to support adaptive learning.

Protecting people, places, and economies through adaptation and resilience must be paired with climate resilient sustainable development and recognition of cultural rights and human rights.

Climate Heritage Policy Priorities: Seize the opportunity presented by the ground-breaking inclusion of culture-based strategies in the new Race to Resilience and by building upon the recent incorporation of culture into the Action Table of the Adaptation and Resilience Pathway of the Marrakesh Global Partnership for Climate Action (MGPCA). Encourage, at all levels of government, the inclusion of culture and heritage in climate adaptation and resilience policy, building on the Rome Declaration adopted at the 2021 Meeting of G20 Ministers of Culture, which called upon countries to include culture and heritage in their national Adaptation Communications under Article 7 of the Paris Agreement. 

Mainstreaming culture into adaptation communications, policies, and measurements.