The settlement patterns for the Bakonzo people, one of the ethnic groups neighbouring the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been changing over the years. Because of the impact of floods, the Bakonzo, who have strong attachment to snow and water bodies, are now forced to settle far away from water bodies, with the disaster threatening the existence of many intangible cultural heritage practices. Their way of life has changed from living a simple life in the green lush environment to converging together in emerging shanty ‘towns’ and internally displace people’s camps. Traditional medicinal plants and raw material for making handicrafts are now difficult to find and traditional agricultural practices are being discontinued.
The accelerating impacts of climate change are causing wholesale disruption to communities, and to historical and social fabric that underpins resilience globally, but disproportionately in the global south. Physical and economic impacts are exacerbated by the loss of underpinning culture and heritage – both tangible and intangible.
For the first time, the UN Climate Convention (COP27) that happened in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt acknowledged the critical linkages between cultural heritage and climate change.
In a series of ground-breaking decisions including those taken on Sunday, November 20th early morning as the event went 39 hours over its scheduled duration, making it the second longest climate COP in history, national governments included cultural heritage in statements on both loss and damage and adaptation.
A new initiative, Sustainable Urban Resilience for the Next Generation (SURGe), announced during the conference, puts culture at the centre of urban resilience. The Initiative, which counts “locally-led and culture-positive” action as one of its guiding principles, aims to support customized approaches depending on local contexts of rapidly developing cities, while recognising that culture and heritage represent both an asset to be protected from climate impacts and a resource to strengthen communities’ transformative change.
Also, in the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan (SHIP), reference is included within a historic agreement, three decades in the making, to set up a Loss and Damage Fund. Taken on African soil, this is the first step in a process to rectify the systemic injustice to billions of people, particularly in the Global South, who are the least responsible for, but are on the frontlines of, the climate crisis. The SHIP language adopted “notes with grave concern the growing gravity, scope and frequency in all regions of loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, resulting in devastating economic and non-economic losses, including forced displacement and impacts on cultural heritage, human mobility and the lives and livelihoods of local communities, and underlines the importance of an adequate and effective response to loss and damage”.
COP27 also took the important decision to include “tangible cultural heritage” as a theme of the new framework adopted for the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work programme on the global goal on adaptation. That same decision also establishes traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems as a cross-cutting consideration.
“These three decisions are a clear victory for the members and partners of the Climate Heritage Network [CHN] across the globe, who made these issues a priority. COP27 saw an unprecedented engagement by cultural voices from arts and heritage. Events in the COP27 protest zone and the Green and Blue Zones, as well as the #ArtCultureHeritageCOP27 and CultureCOP Assembly, lifted up culture in climate action and policy like never before,” reads the press statement issued by the CHN secretariat.
Launched in 2019, CHN is a global network of government at all levels, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, civil society, universities, cultural institutions, artists, creative industries, and design and other businesses that are committed to unlocking the power of culture from arts to heritage to help people imagine and realise low carbon, just, climate resilient futures. CHN members know first-hand that culture and heritage along with indigenous and local knowledge systems area already experiencing loss from both slow and rapid onset hazards (and also sometimes maladaptation and mal-mitigation).
“We have noticed that the living heritage of the Bakonzo can be used to effectively help populations overcome the disruptive effects of natural disasters such as floods. If communities live in their environment and closure to their heritage, they have local knowledge of environment (reading weather patterns); they have local practices that serve to mitigate the impact of a disaster. For instance, the idea of taboos plays a crucial role. Communities respect forests and special tree species, water bodies such as river confluences and riverbanks as dwelling places of spirits. A lot of these taboos have practicable ways of maintaining and managing water resources,” said Simon Musasizi, the Heritage Trust Programme Manager, with the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU), a CHN member organisation.
“We want policy makers to acknowledge that intangible cultural heritage can be directly affected and threatened by climate change while it can also be a source of resilience and recovery in mitigating many of the negative effects of an emergency in favour of rebuilding social cohesion, fostering reconciliation and facilitating recovery for communities confronted with situations of emergency. So, it should be integrated in all their climate change mitigation measures.”
The ground-breaking recognition of the linkage between cultural heritage and climate change at COP27 follows increasing engagement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with culture and heritage, and with the valorisation of diverse knowledge systems, as reflected in the 2022 contribution of IPCC Working Group II to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, and the International Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change co-sponsored by the IPCC, ICOMOS and UNESCO, which was held in December 2021.
While lauding the due reference of cultural heritage in the loss and damage cover decision, CHN regrets the reduction of cultural heritage to merely an element of loss.
Speaking in Sharm el-Sheikh, Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, a founding CHN member, said: “We don’t want to be defined by Loss and Damage. Why not call us by what we are: cultural heritage communities.”
The CHN also notes the paradox of COP27’s attention to loss and damage to cultural heritage, even while it failed to reach agreement on the fair and equitable phaseout of the fossil fuels that are causing this damage.
CHN Coordinator Andrew Potts noted: “Make no mistake: mitigating the risk of loss and damage to culture and heritage through the implementation by all nations of a precautionary approach that pursues pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C, with no or limited overshoot, must be of paramount concern to everyone who cares for culture and heritage.”
A more holistic treatment of the cultural dimensions of the climate crisis was at the heart of “The Sharm El-Sheikh Declaration on Culture-based Climate Action” proposed at COP27 by the CHN with the endorsement of Jordan. The Declaration stresses that culture, from arts to heritage, plays a fundamental role in helping people to imagine and realise low carbon, just, climate resilient futures and that culture-based climate action has a crucial role to play in meeting the objectives of the UNFCCC, including also those related to mitigation and promoting climate-resilient sustainable development. The Declaration was discussed during a landmark High Level Ministerial Dialogue on Cultural Heritage-Based Climate Solutions held Thursday with the support of Egypt.
The Climate Heritage Network will build on this momentum, including the Ministerial Dialogue, and work throughout the year to scale-up culture-based climate action and to win more holistic recognition of the culture-dimensions of the climate crisis and the responses to it at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates in December 2023.
https://crossculturalfoundation.or.ug/ccfu/2022/11/24/climate-change-adaptation-without-heritage-isnt-working-but-cop27-makes-important-decision/