Hundreds of thousands of significant archaeological and cultural heritage sites (cultural sites) along the coasts of every continent are threatened by sea level rise, and many will be destroyed. This wealth of artefacts and monuments testifies to human history, cosmology and identity. While cultural sites are especially important to local and Indigenous communities, a stall in coordinated global action means adaptation at a local scale is often unsupported. In response, this paper produces a practical climate change risk analysis methodology designed for independent, community-scale management of cultural sites. It builds on existing methods that prioritise sites most at risk from climate impacts, proposing a field survey that integrates an assessment of the relative cultural value of sites with assessment of exposure and sensitivity to climate impacts. The field survey also stands as a monitoring program and complements an assessment of organisational adaptive capacity. The preliminary field survey was tested by Indigenous land managers in remote northern Australia at midden and rock art sites threatened by sea level rise, extreme flood events and a range of non-climactic hazards. A participatory action research methodology-incorporating planning workshops, semi-structured interviews and participant observations-gave rise to significant modifications to the preliminary field survey as well as management prioritisation of 120 sites. The field survey is anticipated to have global application, particularly among marginalised and remote Indigenous communities. Wellplanned and informed participation, with community control, monitoring and well-informed actions, will contribute significantly to coordinated global and regional adaptation strategies.

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Australian rangelands are rich in Indigenous cultural heritage sites and Indigenous rangers increasingly manage them. It is well documented that climate-change adaptation planning on a local scale benefits from a stakeholder-led or bottom-up process. However, to date, few bottom-up, practical adaptation pathways exist for Indigenous Australians. This paper describes the development of a planning tool that supports Indigenous rangers’ plan for climate-change impacts on cultural heritage sites. To date, a limited number of methodologies for managing climate-change impacts on heritage sites have been developed internationally. Importantly these are not geared to a bottom-up planning process. By contrast, many generic adaptation decision-support tools exist that support bottom-up planning. These tools commonly begin with a scoping phase. The scoping phase of a tool that supports Indigenous rangers manage climate-change impacts on heritage sites is described. A validation model, consisting of central assumptions behind each element of the scoping phase, is then set out. Future testing in the field would involve assessment of the tool through confirmation or otherwise of these assumptions. The first two assumptions in the validation model are then addressed: that Indigenous rangers perceive climate-change impacts on heritage sites and that planning for them is a priority need. Previous literature has not addressed these questions in detail. Only if positive responses are gained for these foundational assumptions can future testing of the tool be justified. Results from preliminary fieldwork undertaken in northern Australia found Indigenous rangers in two out of three case studies perceive impacts on heritage sites, and regard addressing these impacts as a priority.