The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced the ‘Climate Heritage Initiative’, aimed at addressing significant threats to both humanity and cultural heritage sites worldwide. A key focus of these initiatives is on adapting and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
The Climate Heritage Initiative is a $15 million suite of projects. This boosts the WMF’s longstanding efforts at the nexus of climate and heritage, coinciding with recent UNESCO figures indicating that climate change threatens one in six cultural heritage sites.
Bénédicte de Montlaur, President and CEO of WMF said, “While the magnitude of the threat posed by climate change to societies around the world is widely recognised, its particular impact on cultural heritage remains understudied.” He further added, “…At a time when shifting weather patterns and natural disasters continue to strike communities and strain the built environment, we feel that we as heritage professionals have unique and valuable expertise to share about cultivating resilience through preservation.”
Climate Heritage Initiative aims to adapt historic gardens to evolving climates and establish a global network for coastal heritage sites to exchange insights on coping with challenges such as sea level rise, storm surge, and erosion. Additionally, emphasis is placed on leveraging heritage infrastructure to address water insecurity, with projects aimed at restoring traditional water storage and conveyance systems in tropical countries.
Traditional Water Systems
According to the United Nations, urban water demand is expected to surge by 80% by 2050, leading to water scarcity for 2.4 billion people in cities. While in rural areas, alterations in seasonal rainfall patterns and excessive groundwater extraction are placing pressure on water resources used for irrigation and grazing.
Preserving traditional water management methods and infrastructure, some of which are endangered, can aid rural communities in adapting to climate challenges in environmentally friendly ways.
“There’s also a lot of traditional wisdom that has been captured over generations,” said Dr Rohit Jigyasu, Project Manager at ICCROM, during a panel discussion on heritage and climate change hosted by WMF. “Communities have always adapted to their context, and their context has always given them this challenge of changing environmental conditions.… If you look at vernacular architecture, a lot of it is really designed to control the climate in a very beautiful way.”
WMF conducted a country-wide survey in India of historic water bodies and identified five sites at Rajaon ki Baoli, Taj Bawdi, Kundvav, Jaipur Baolis, and Wai Temples and Ghats – where restoring historic infrastructure would have a large impact on the local community and create open spaces for community use.
In Nepal, traditional water distribution systems, known as hitis, consisting of intricate channels and carved spouts, continue to be crucial for supplying water to local communities. Unfortunately, uncontrolled development has led to the destruction of hiti infrastructure, disrupting water flow, and the loss of maintenance knowledge. WMF aims to map and document selected hitis, improve their reliability in providing water, and offer maintenance and conservation guidelines to be adopted by local governments to ensure the continuity of water supply.
The Andean region has a traditional water storage system, featuring dams, channels, and retention ponds established before the Inca era, aimed at storing runoff for the dry season. However, during the colonial period and twentieth-century modernisation, these systems were disrupted and fell out of use. WMF in collaboration with the Instituto de Montaña, is actively involved in the restoration of these systems. The project involves revitalising traditional maintenance skills within Indigenous communities to ensure reliable access to water for agriculture and daily life.
Coastal Heritage
In collaboration with English Heritage, WMF has launched the Coastal Connections initiative. This project recognises the threat to heritage sites in coastal zones due to climate change. It aims to establish a global network of heritage professionals addressing such challenges. The project seeks to research, promote, and assist coastal heritage sites globally.
Historical parks and gardens
Parks and gardens are highly susceptible to climate change, facing risks such as flooding, droughts, pests, and diseases. WMF is addressing these challenges by conducting a comprehensive analysis of historic garden management in the context of climate change.
MWF has implemented strategies to minimize the carbon footprint of Kew’s historic Palm House and Waterlily House, Royal Botanical Gardens in the UK. Techniques such as fabric conservation, integration of sustainable geothermal energy, installation of efficient heating systems, and upgrading the structure itself enabled the historic glasshouses to become carbon neutral.
Additional Priority Projects
WMF will prioritise other projects focusing on crisis response and inclusive heritage. These initiatives encompass the conservation of the earthquake-affected ancient city of Antakya, Turkey; the restoration of the Teacher’s House glass dome in Kyiv, Ukraine, damaged by Russian missiles; and the preservation of Phnom Bakheng, a significant temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Inclusive heritage efforts involve transforming the Fabric Synagogue into a Jewish cultural center in Timișoara, Romania; collaborating with Indigenous communities for sustainable visitor management at the Sand Island Petroglyphs in Utah; and conservation of Old Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Legacy projects from 2023, in partnership with the Global Heritage Fund, focus on sustainable tourism in Ciudad Perdida, Colombia, and preserving traditional vernacular architecture in Dali Village, China’s Guizhou Province.