Exploring pathways for climate resilient preservation: Human well-being within development spaces

Keywords: climate justice, climate resilient development, climate resilience pathways, cultural heritage
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61

Abstract

Increasing coastal development and the loss of cultural heritage sites spurred by recent extreme weather and climate events have resulted in extraordinary losses and expanded threats to places of local and national importance. Recent scholarly engagement with climate resilient development has considered cultural heritage to be a form of climate justice, often finding itself categorized as part of well-being and quality of life impacts. As cultural heritage sites are being increasingly impacted, new engagements with the past have generated activism towards climate action, and are attempting to conceptualize a form of climate resilient preservation. This concept of climate resilient preservation is in many ways antagonistic and contradictory to climate resilient development. This paper seeks to expand our understanding of these tensions by exploring how people engage with the threats to and loss of cultural heritage sites and how these places are made use of by climate financing institutions. These findings highlight the challenges in defining the goals and objectives for climate resilient development and what the implications are for the preservation of cultural heritage. It is the hope of this paper to promote a broader conservation about the limitations of current climate resilience pathways.