The Water and the Land: How the Private Sector and Government Work Together to Plan for Climate Change Impacts to Cultural Resources

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Government, inclusive of the local, state, and national levels, is the largest aggregate landholder in the United States and has under its direct jurisdiction the largest array of cultural resources in the country, not to mention the cultural resources under jurisdictional oversight. As such, government is at the spear’s point of climate change impacts to cultural resources and thus the need to develop responses to preserve important heritage on behalf of its constituents. That said, the direct ability of government to develop solutions and respond directly is limited by staffing constraints dictated by annual budgets and circumscribed mandates focused on the locations and resources under their direct control and oversight. Conversely, while the private sector typically controls only relatively small and discontinuous landholdings and has no legal mandate, it has a broader, more holistic perspective on potential solutions due to the range of clients it serves, the geographies it covers, and its greater flexibility to engage staff with specialized knowledge and expertise. This poster demonstrates how AECOM as a company works with municipal, state, and federal government agencies to provide strategies and solutions that address climate change impacts to their important cultural resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32419