Cultural Heritage and Climate Change

Dr. Marcy Rockman, ICOMOS-IPCC Scientific Coordinator for the Climate Change and Heritage Working Group and Climate Researcher with Co-Equal, spoke about the intersection of cultural heritage and climate change. Based on her new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article on historical and cultural heritage, she shared recommendations on how agencies could better incorporate historical and cultural considerations into the U.S. response to climate change, with attention to the need to better compile and use relevant data. 

HIGHLIGHTS

Dr. Marcy Rockman, ICOMOS-IPCC Scientific Coordinator for the Climate Change and Heritage Working Group and Climate Researcher with Co-Equal

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• Rockman and co-author Carrie Hritz published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 13 titled, “Expanding Use of Archaeology in Climate Change Response by Changing its Social Environment.”
• The article addresses the use of archaeological data in climate change responses. It was driven by experiences working with the National Park Service (NPS), the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Census Bureau that revealed roadblocks in connecting archaeology to climate change research and planning.
• Humans inhabit both a natural environment and a social environment. The social environment is created by human interactions, perceptions, beliefs, etc., and shapes the kind of actions that are acceptable or desirable.
• For example, the call at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP24 to increase social and political ambition to act on climate change was for changes to the social environment.
• Archaeology is a way to understand the intersections between the natural and social environments across time and space and can inform the global climate change response in a variety of ways.
  • Historical documents and archaeological records have shown that humans have been sustainably managing wildlife resources near a lake in Iceland since the first settlements in the tenth century. This data is a model of a sustainable relationship between natural and social environments that has been maintained on a millennial scale.
  • In Lowell, Massachusetts, one of the first sites of industrial processes in the United States, archaeological records can be used to trace the history of the economic, labor, and social systems that created climate change and how changing social priorities have affected the natural environment.
  • The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) drives the designation of historic places in the United States, and outlines criteria for identifying nationally regulated historic places. These protocols can be applied to the global climate response as a way to determine which areas are important to preserve.
• The domestic and international responses to climate change have gaps in their attention to social science and archaeological data and methods.
• There is no federal agency with a named requirement for preserving cultural heritage sites, and the National Park Service reduced funding and staffing for cultural resource preservation between 1995 and 2008.
  • The United States’ fragmented approach to cultural preservation limits the capacity to address the intersections between climate change and cultural heritage.
  • Climate-oriented nongovernmental organizations also rarely address archaeology or cultural heritage.
• Ways to better incorporate cultural heritage into domestic and international climate change responses include the following:
  • Found a named federal climate heritage coordination office.
  • Link archaeology and heritage in climate research and investment.
  • Foster climate heritage demonstration projects.
  • Expand climate NGO attention to archaeology and heritage.

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