Adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts in the Netherlands

Adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts in the Netherlands: barriers, interdependencies, and strategies for overcoming them

Fatorić, Sandra (TU Delft History & Complexity)
Biesbroek, Robbert (Wageningen University & Research)

2020

Climate change is currently impacting cultural heritage globally. Despite advances in the understanding of the relationship between climate change impacts and cultural heritage, there are significant barriers that hamper adaptation of cultural heritage to current and projected climate risks. This paper aims to advance the empirical understanding of barriers to adapting cultural heritage to climate-related impacts in the Netherlands by identifying different barriers, their interdependencies, and possible strategies to overcome these barriers. Using a web-based questionnaire with 57 experts, we find that the most frequently reported barriers are a lack of climate change adaptation policy for cultural heritage, and lack of climate vulnerability and risk assessments for diverse cultural heritage types. Our study finds that barriers are perceived to be interdependent and conjointly constrain adapting cultural heritage to climate change. Six actionable strategies are identified to navigate these barriers.

Climate change adaptation
Climate policy
Cultural heritage management
Historic preservation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2680a904-35c2-4768-803e-17ac9e105203

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02831-1

0165-0009

Climatic Change: an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change, 162 (2), 301-320

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2020 Sandra Fatorić, Robbert Biesbroek