The Future of Heritage As Climates Change ─ Loss, Adaptation and Creativity

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.

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.