Adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts in the Netherlands: barriers, interdependencies, and strategies for overcoming them

Abstract

Climate change is currently impacting cultural heritage globally. Despite advances in the understanding of the relationship between climate change impacts and cultural heritage, there are significant barriers that hamper adaptation of cultural heritage to current and projected climate risks. This paper aims to advance the empirical understanding of barriers to adapting cultural heritage to climate-related impacts in the Netherlands by identifying different barriers, their interdependencies, and possible strategies to overcome these barriers. Using a web-based questionnaire with 57 experts, we find that the most frequently reported barriers are a lack of climate change adaptation policy for cultural heritage, and lack of climate vulnerability and risk assessments for diverse cultural heritage types. Our study finds that barriers are perceived to be interdependent and conjointly constrain adapting cultural heritage to climate change. Six actionable strategies are identified to navigate these barriers.

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“…These findings might be associated with the Netherlands' efforts for realizing its ambitious Sustainability Agenda that included, for instance, "the Dutch Dairy Organisation and the Dutch Agricultural and Horticultural organisation to have zero-carbon emissions in dairy chains by 2020" through green practices [60]. The Netherlands is one of the most prominent examples of European countries recognizing the urgent need for the implementation of green practices in order to protect also the CH of the country [19][20][21]. It is not surprising that 26 countries in Europe (see Figure 3) are represented in the study's sample.…”

“…Therefore, it must be tackled to protect the Netherlands' CH. At this point, it should be mentioned that climate change has challenged the CH management approaches globally, as they seek to deal effectively with the threats caused by the environmental change by promoting sustainable models [21].…”

A society ill-equipped to deal with the effects of climate change on cultural heritage and landscape: A qualitative assessment of planning practices in transport infrastructure

“…All interviewees stated, in one form or another, that the CH program at their organisation was too old to include climate threats and it is clear that the identi cation of threats to CH has just begun at the organisations included in this study. A national strategy for climate change orientated CH and landscape planning also appears to be lacking, and, moreover, there are currently no clear routines for prioritisation, a problem highlighted as a barrier to planning (Uittenbroek, 2016;Fatorić and Biesbroek, 2020). This applies to all of the administrative levels studied, with almost all climate related work being undertaken reactively and competing for time with existing tasks which are required by legislation.…”

“…Su cient resources, both monetary and personnel, are barriers to a smooth planning process (Bedsworth and Hanak 2013;Ziervogel and Parnell, 2014). However, Fatorić and Biesbroek (2020) found that institutional and technical barriers dominated over nancial barriers in the Netherlands. Granberg and Elander (2007:546) touched upon a possible reason for the perceived lack of resources, raising the more general question of how municipalities prioritise with respect to territory and citizens, and "not just particular categories" in which some actions are executed at the expense of others.…”

“…Moreover, measures for adapting CH and landscape to climate change are rarely found in the core research literature on climate change (Fatorić and Seekamp, 2017; c.f. Fatorić and Biesbroek 2020), transport infrastructure or even CH, and more research is called for (Sesana et al 2018;Fatorić and Biesbroek 2020). More focus has been afforded the preservation of archaeological sites and artefacts (e.g.…”