Responding to Climate Change Threats to Archaeology through the World Heritage Convention

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Climate change is the fastest growing threat to World Heritage properties, including archaeological sites, worldwide. Warming temperatures, sea level rise, coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, drought, worsening wildfires and more intense rainstorms, hurricanes and typhoons are putting hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites at risk, including many World Heritage properties such as Neolithic Orkney (Scotland), Tasmanian Wilderness (Australia), Mesa Verde (USA) and Kujataa Greenland (Denmark). When the World Heritage Convention was signed in 1972, there was no hint that climate change would become the threat that it has since proved to be. Now however, there is a need to update the convention’s policies to address climate change and promote effective responses to reduce climate impacts and increase resilience. There is also an urgent need to develop a rapid assessment climate vulnerability methodology which can be used for all World Heritage sites – both cultural and natural.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25956