“Culture and heritage give voice to equity, creativity, values, memory, spirituality, and tradition across both time and space, themes that are essential for transformative change in cities. And yet, the role of culture in climate action is not well understood. This gap is evidenced by a practical reality: while the culture and heritage sectors are important institutions in many communities, their expertise is not well mobilized in support of climate action. Increasingly, however, arts, culture and heritage agencies of cities and regions are flipping this paradigm.” Creating a Culture of Climate Action: City and Regional Arts, Culture and Heritage Offices Mobilizing to Meet the Climate Emergency, Culture x Climate webinar, 27 October 2020
Governor Jerry Brown, Global Climate Action Summit, San Francisco, 2018. Photo courtesy Global Climate Action Summit, CC BY-2.0.In San Francisco in September 2018, the California Office of Historic Preservation, led by Julianne Polanco, organized, with many national and international partners, the Climate Heritage Mobilization in support of the Global Climate Action Summit, which was hosted by Gov. Jerry Brown. The event was devoted to the role of cultural heritage and historic preservation—tangible and intangible—in climate action. Its aim was to highlight how heritage actors can help their communities achieve their climate targets and the ambitions of the Paris Agreement, with an emphasis on integrated nature-culture approaches.
The Mobilization led to the launch in Edinburgh in November 2019 of a new international Climate Heritage Network, a mutual support network of city, state/provincial, regional and tribal historic preservation offices (together with related NGOs, universities and other organizations) committed to aid their jurisdictions in tackling climate change and achieving the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. The Climate Action Network released its Madrid-to-Glasgow Arts, Culture and Heritage Climate Action Plan at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP25, in Madrid in December.
The AIA is a member of the Climate Heritage Network and a Presenting Sponsor, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, of the 2019 Launch, where AIA President Carl Elefante, FAIA, spoke. It is a member of two voluntary working groups for the Madrid-to-Glasgow Action Plan, one tasked with communicating the connection between cultural heritage and climate action, the second with making the case for building reuse through better metrics for avoided operational and embodied carbon.
Currently underway is the Climate Heritage Network’s Culture x Climate, a virtual global forum for arts, culture and heritage-based climate action, which runs through 27 November 2020 and is anchored by Climate Heritage Week 2020 (16-22 November). It offers an online array of visionary panel sessions and a series of informative webinars and action-oriented forums.
The 2018 Climate Heritage Mobilization was designed to support California’s ambitious Cultural Resources Climate Change Task Force, which is helping to set the standard for climate planning by city and regional heritage authorities. The state’s commitment to the preservation and management of cultural resources in the light of climate change is articulated in the Parks, Recreation, and California Culture section of the Safeguarding California Plan: 2018 Update – California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy:
“PC-4 Understand the scope of climate change impacts to cultural resources and integrate climate change into the management of cultural resources. Historic and cultural resources include artifacts, archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, ethnographic resources, museum collections, buildings and structures. A number of these sacred sites, objects, and heritage sites are a critical aspect of living culture for many Californians, especially California Native American Tribes. Cultural resources are elements of cultural continuity and identity that provide a connection to the land and inspire practices today. Historic and cultural resources face many impacts from climate change, and efforts to preserve them must be interwoven with initiatives to address the effects of climate change to the built and natural environments, and communities.” (p. 220)
