Puerto Rican Cultural Heritage Under Threat by Climate Change

Summary

As a tropical, oceanic island in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico is feeling the effects of climate change. Rising sea level, increased storminess, and unpredictable sudden weather events combine with heavy coastal occupation and little or no coherent development planning, to increase social vulnerability to coastal change. The burden of economic problems that the Island is suffering from also increases the complexities of working towards resiliency. Within this context, coastal heritage and local and traditional knowledge are not priorities for the government and only have been superficially considered within climate change conversations. This presentation summarizes the work that has been conducted in Puerto Rico to assess coastal heritage under threat by climate change and the actions under way to improve the prospects of documentation, recording and preservation of the mostly unknown coastal history of this island.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Burning Libraries: Environmental Impacts on Heritage and Science   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14577