Mobilising cultural heritage for transformative climate action: addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis in urban contexts
We invite you to join a webinar exploring the contributions of cultural heritage to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal; presenting and discussing successful heritage-led climate action examples carried out in Europe’s cities and regions; presenting and discussing the findings of the latest policy documents on this topic, including the OMC Group report on Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change as well as the “European Cultural Heritage Green Paper: Putting Europe’s shared heritage at the heart of the European Green Deal”.
The webinar will be on Thursday 10 November 2022 at 16.30 CET, as part of our EU-funded Cultural Heritage in Action peer-learning programme.
As revealed by the recently published report by a group of EU Member States’ experts entitled “Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change: Where the European Green Deal meets cultural heritage”, “cultural heritage is under attack from climate change at an unprecedented speed and scale”.
The most evident threats stem from extreme climatic events: severe precipitation, long heatwaves, droughts, strong winds and sea-level rise – all of which will increase dramatically in the future. The impacts of these extreme weather events come in addition to slower deteriorations caused by increase in temperatures, the fluctuations in humidity or fluctuations in freeze–thaw cycles. Preserving cultural heritage from the effects of climate change is becoming an increasing challenge for cities and regions.
However, as demonstrated by the “European Cultural Heritage Green Paper: Putting Europe’s shared heritage at the heart of the European Green Deal”, cultural heritage also has an immense potential to contribute to mitigating the climate and biodiversity crisis. From smart reuse of heritage buildings to using traditional agricultural know-how to support sustainable food systems, cultural heritage can support Europe’s transition to become a green, resilient and climate-neutral continent.
While the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) will be running in Sharm el-Sheikh, the webinar will aim to discuss the threats posed by climate change to Europe’s heritage and showcase examples of positive climate action through cultural heritage in urban contexts.
