Historic Environment Scotland

ADAPT NORTHERN HERITAGE – Outline project proposal, 23 Feb. 2016 Page 1 of 1

Interreg NPA – Preparatory project proposal 2016

ADAPT NORTHERN HERITAGE – Adapting northern cultural heritage to environmental impacts of climate change through community engagement and informed conservation

Outline proposal 23 February 2016

Historic Environment Scotland is developing, with partners from Norway and Sweden, a project pro-posal, Adapt Northern Heritage, for the Interreg programme Northern Periphery & Artic (Interreg NPA). Initially, an application for a preparatory project will be made, to lead to a main application in late 2016.

The project is concerned with adapting northern cultural heritage to environmental impacts of climate change through community engagement and informed conservation. The main project objectives are:

Develop an advanced methodology for risk assessments of climate change impacts on historic places and associated adaptation strategies

Produce a geospatial software tool to make the methodology easily and widely accessible to concerned stakeholders to make advanced assessment specific to the historic places in their care

Create an inclusive community network for stakeholders concerned with the conservation of northern cultural heritage in a climate change context

“Climate change will have a direct effect on heritage sites, through physical changes in the environ-ment that change the conservation conditions for the materials of the site. We have only seen the be-ginning of the physical change.”1 The northern regions of the world face similar challenges in safe-guarding its tangible cultural heritage due to a drastically changing climate. The NORDEN project Ef-fects of Climate Change on Cultural Heritage Sites and Cultural Environments2 has established that “The anticipated effects on heritage sites in the Nordic region in the future will be caused by a warmer and damper climate, rising sea level and more frequent extreme weather.” The same, however, also applies to the north and west of the British Isles as well as the north of Northern America and Russia. Generally, “future rise in temperature is expected …, but with regional differences. … It appears that heavy and extreme rainfall will occur more often … [concurring with] probably … somewhat stronger winds”.3

The northern regions of the world have common challenges in respect of observed and future climate change and its consequences. At the same timely, these countries, individually, have limited resources to tackle these issues, particularly in the heritage management field. Exchanging information and mak-ing use of the combined knowledge and expertise in this field is important and will beneficially strength-en the personal and institutional networks between the concerned cultural heritage administrators.4

While the NORDEN project has delivered an excellent overview about the potential effects of climate change, illustrated with select case studies, the requirement for “response planning that takes climate change into account”, noted in its final report from 2011, still remains inadequately addressed to this date. ADAPT NORTHERN HERITAGE will address this requirement, with a particular focus on planning activities undertaken by local and regional authorities and local and special-interest communities, as they are the key stakeholders in the heritage management process. Many of these stakeholders are located in remote and sparsely populated areas and face similar conservation planning challenges. Supporting these stakeholders will especially help to safeguard northern heritage against climate change effects, thereby preserving an important cultural, economic and social resource.

1 Kaslegard, S.A., 2011. Climate Change and Cultural Heritage in the Nordic Countries. (TemaNord 2010:599). p.11. 2 NORDEN cooperation project Effekter av klimaendringer på kulturminner og kulturmiljo, 2008-2010 3 Kaslegard, ibid. 4 ibid., p.7