Climate Change and UNESCO World Heritage-Listed Cultural Properties: A Systematic Review, 2008–2021

Abstract

Underpinned by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 Statement, this systematic review analyses 58 peer-reviewed articles published during 2008–2021 and retrieved from Scopus and Google Scholar that address the relationship between climate change and UNESCO World Heritage-listed cultural properties. The review reveals a suite of observations that will be important to consider for future research, including: the significant increase in publications since 2008; the prevalence of scholarship focused on the region of Europe and North America; the diversity of research methods and approaches; the instances of climate change hazards; the numerous adaptation measures and barriers. The study also showcases a much greater scholarly concentration on natural sites compared to cultural sites, observing that a reliance on a nature/culture binary does not bode well for the effective safeguarding of cultural World Heritage sites. This article also highlights the need for greater representation from the Global South in terms of both geographic focus and authorship, the lack of collaboration between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) disciplines, the capacity for collective action from different stakeholders, the importance of intangible elements, and the effects of both international and national legal frameworks and regulations.

Climate Change Impacts on UNESCO World Heritage-Listed Cultural Properties in the Asia–Pacific Region: A Systematic Review of State of Conservation Reports, 1979–2021

“…The 551 SoC reports were then screened using keywords connected to climate change, including: "climate", "flood", "storm", "drought", "desertification", "ocean", "temperature", "severe weather event", "natural hazard", "typhoon", "cyclone", "hurricane", "mudslide", "landslide", "humidity", "precipitation", and "rain". These keywords were selected based on hazards identified by UNESCO as being climate related and then expanded by drawing on findings from a systematic review of scholarly articles focused on climate change and cultural heritage properties [11]. Following the application of keywords, 231 SoC reports were selected for further assessment and evaluation.…”

“…What is striking is that the number of reports which seriously consider the impacts of climate change hazards on cultural properties is very small (n = 51, 9.2%) compared to the overall number of SoC reports attached to cultural properties in the period under review (n = 551). While there was an increase in climate change hazard reporting between 1991-2021, the number of references to climatic impacts in the SoC reports is not commensurate with the increasingly acute and omnipresent effects of climate change in the Asia-Pacific region [58], including those on World Heritage-listed cultural properties [11]. What this suggests is that the State of Conservation Information System can only provide a partial and incomplete view of instances of climate change hazards and the ways in which these hazards are handled by States Parties [59].…”

“…Further south on the banks of the Yi River near the city of Luoyang, surging waters contributed to "partial collapses in the soil foundations" of the Longmen Grottoes [2], inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000 because of its stone statues, stupas, and carved inscriptions from the 5th to 8th century [3]. While these cultural works of the Northern Wei and Tang dynasties have an elevated position, which protects them from direct damage, news reports noted that "strong water exposure", highlight that studies on climate change and cultural heritage tend to be focused on Europe [11,17,18] and lack international collaboration [18], particularly between scholars from the Global North and South [11]. It can also be observed that studies on climate and heritage emerge from a variety of disciplines in the sciences and social sciences, utilising an array of methods [11,17,18] and while attention to the different climate hazards is uneven [19], there is increasing attention being paid to adaptation and mitigation [15,18] and to climatic problems in historical urban landscape research [16].…”

“…While these cultural works of the Northern Wei and Tang dynasties have an elevated position, which protects them from direct damage, news reports noted that "strong water exposure", highlight that studies on climate change and cultural heritage tend to be focused on Europe [11,17,18] and lack international collaboration [18], particularly between scholars from the Global North and South [11]. It can also be observed that studies on climate and heritage emerge from a variety of disciplines in the sciences and social sciences, utilising an array of methods [11,17,18] and while attention to the different climate hazards is uneven [19], there is increasing attention being paid to adaptation and mitigation [15,18] and to climatic problems in historical urban landscape research [16]. Although these reviews focused on different aspects of climate change and cultural heritage, such as barriers to climate adaptation in polar regions [15] or impacts on urban heritage [19], they all share a common reliance on peer-reviewed literature.…”

“…To what extent can SoC reports deliver systematic climate impact analysis? We narrow our focus to the Asia-Pacific region as, outside of the Europe and North American regions, it is the World Heritage region identified in the most recent systematic review of scholarly literature by Nguyen and Baker [11] (pp. 2396, 2401), as hosting the cultural properties most impacted by climate change and attracting a significant volume of scholarly interest in that regard.…”