Over the last two decades, ICOMOS has been actively involved in global initiatives addressing climate change and cultural heritage. ICOMOS’ official engagement with climate change began in 2005, with the adoption of Resolution 35 at the 15th General Assembly in Xi’an, China (ICOMOS 2005).  This was followed by several intensive efforts to define the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage including the expert meeting on May 22, 2007 in Delhi India (ICOMOS 2007), a Symposium of the ICOMOS Scientific Committees titled “Cultural Heritage and Global Climate Change” on October 7, 2007 in Pretoria, South Africa, the Thematic Workshop held in Quebec, Canada in October 2008, and other efforts by many of the Scientific Committees.

Along with these continuing efforts, ICOMOS played an important role in the formulation of the 2007 “Policy Document on the Impacts of Climate Change on World Heritage Properties” (World Heritage Committee 2007) and the preceding “Strategy to Assist States Parties to the Convention to Implement Appropriate Management Responses,” in 2007, adopted by the World Heritage Convention in 2007 (World Heritage General Assembly 2007).

ICOMOS’s role in identifying the interconnection of heritage and climate change is apparent in the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 (UN General Assembly 2015), and also the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015).  In addition, in 2016 an ICOMOS representative joined a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage to ensure the inclusion of cultural heritage in the language on their Action Area 6, on migration and displacement (UNFCCC 2016; 2014).  

ICOMOS formally established the Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group in 2016, leading to additional efforts to increase climate awareness and its interaction with cultural heritage.  At a joint meeting with IUCN in 2016 at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, the Statement of Commitments by the attendees titled “Mālama Honua – to care for our island Earth,” was signed by the leadership of both ICOMOS and IUCN (ICOMOS 2026).  This statement A subsequent Policy was adopted in 2016 at the 41st Session of the World Heritage Committee in Krakow, Poland, noting the urgency of climate impacts (World Heritage Committee 2017).

The Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group of ICOMOS became a founding member and first Secretariat of the Climate Heritage Network in 2019, and was subsequently renamed the Climate Action Working Group in 2021. ICOMOS is an active member of the Group of Friends of Climate Action and a strong partner to UNESCO.

Recognizing the interconnections between cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and climate resilience, ICOMOS advocates for embedding cultural considerations in climate policies and actions. By developing policy messages that highlight culture’s contributions to adaptation, mitigation, resilience, and behavioral change, ICOMOS seeks to inform advocacy efforts that integrate heritage conservation into global climate strategies. ICOMOS Climate Action Working Group advocates  efforts that integrate cultural heritage into global climate policies and local climate actions. Throughout 10 years, CAWG has launched several policy messages, collaboration networks and projects on the role of cultural heritage in climate action.

Through the work of its Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group and other committees, ICOMOS has issued several resolutions, reports and recommendations aimed at recognizing heritage in climate policies, including the report The Future of Our Pasts (ICOMOS, 2019), resolutions on Climate Emergency and People-Centered Approaches (ICOMOS, 2020), ICOMOS toolkits for Heritage in Climate Adaptation and Heritage, Climate Justice and Equity, (ICOMOS, 2021), Europa Nostra/ICOMOS “European Cultural Heritage Green Paper” (Europa Nostra/ICOMOS, 2021). ICOMOS has also contributed to several recent climate action policy documents; UN Special Report on Cultural Rights and Climate Change (UN, 2020), report Strengthening Cultural Heritage Resilience for Climate Change – Where the European Green Deal meets cultural heritage (European Commission, 2022) and UNESCO Policy document for Climate Action for World Heritage (UNESCO, 2023).

The need for climate action in cultural tourism is also called for in principle 7 of the ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism (ICOMOS, 2022). The Advisory Committee, members of which are also members of CAWG, has prepared the ICOMOS Responsible Practice Toolkit, approved by the Board in January 2025. The Toolkit comprises a Carbon Reduction Strategy and tools to measure the travel carbon generated by meetings, to establish a baseline against which to measure performance, and to encourage and assist in the use of online and hybrid format meetings.

Since 2016, members of the CAWG have been working with UNESCO on a recently ratified Policy Document on Climate Action for World Heritage. ICOMOS CAWG were the organizers of the first-ever International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage, and Climate Change in 2021, which was a collaboration between ICOMOS, the IPCC and UNESCO designed to build new conversations and collaborations between the broad fields of culture, heritage and climate.

ICOMOS CAWG is collaborating with ICCROM, IUCN and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in the development of a toolkit for UNESCO World Heritage site managers, as part of the World Heritage Leadership Program. ICOMOS has been working with a wide range of partners to explore new tools to analyze climate vulnerability at heritage sites, including through the CVI Africa Project, which aims to develop rapid and systematic approaches to understanding climate impacts. ICOMOS’s ongoing “Preserving Legacies” project includes heritage sites and custodians worldwide, combining local knowledge, cutting-edge science, community capacity building, and interactive networking, increasing access to heritage adaptation and transforming conservation as a field to meet the challenges of the climate crisis.

The climate action framework outlined in the ICOMOS Report The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging Cultural Heritage in Climate Action (2019) was designed to provide a benchmark against which heritage communities may measure their climate action. Realizing the potential of cultural heritage practitioners and professionals to drive climate action requires better recognition of the cultural dimensions of climate change and adjusting the aims and methodologies of heritage practice. The expertise of ICOMOS members, and that of many others, can contribute to this endeavor. Adapted approaches, solutions and standards will be required for the different types of cultural heritage that exist to achieve the best outcomes and avoid irreversible mistakes.

The ICOMOS Resolution on Climate Emergency adopted in 2020 calls on all the ICOMOS community to implement heritage responses to climate change that “seek to safeguard all types of heritages from the current and projected adverse impacts of climate change, both rapid and slow onset, by undertaking vulnerability and risk assessments, monitoring, and by implementing appropriate climate change adaptation strategies and risk-informed, disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery strategies”. It also calls on the ICOMOS community to “recognize equity and justice as fundamental to understanding and address the challenges of climate change, including through solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and vulnerable and frontline communities; participatory climate governance; and gender-responsive, human rights-based approaches;” in finding solutions that “Integrate the conservation of nature and culture, endogenous and traditional knowledge, and landscape-scale approaches into policies and programmes where appropriate.”

ICOMOS highlights the creativity and potential resilience embedded in the culture and heritage of local communities. Climate action based on cultural practices and indigenous knowledge addressed in local, national, and international heritage policies and practice connect people with heritage and places, strengthen intercultural dialogue, and enhance understanding and hope for the future. The recognition of culture and the need for cultural change in a just transition to low carbon futures will help promote and deliver climate resilient pathways for sustainable and ideally regenerative futures. This will better realise the full potential of cultural heritage to deliver climate-resilient pathways to strengthen sustainable development while promoting a just transition to low-carbon futures.

Harnessing the power of diverse cultural values and ways of knowing, education and storytelling, art and craft, tangible and intangible heritage, design and creativity can, in turn guide and scale that action to create the systemic change needed to tackle the twin climate and biodiversity crises. Tangible and intangible heritage and traditional knowledge may, through its embedded regenerative qualities, enhance resilience by offering time-tested, low-carbon, reciprocal and circular practices, technologies and solutions across sectors, including the built and natural environment, agriculture, energy, and care for habitats and communities.

Respecting and valuing local and indigenous knowledge systems will require the framing of new approaches and the development of new tools and methodologies which centre different world views and other ways of knowing in an honest, transparent and consensual manner. This may require a fundamental rethink of historic and current power dynamics and control to promote inclusive and bottom-up approaches which respect all knowledge systems and have the trust and informed consent of affected communities. This will result in both better heritage practice and also more effective climate action.

ICOMOS has highlighted the importance of taking cultural rights and cultural impacts into consideration in responding to all aspects of climate change and in climate action. It is essential to prioritize an urgent, effective and concerted global effort to prevent the cultural extinction of heritage and related communities facing particular threats from the climate emergency, such as those in polar and coastal regions, including indigenous peoples and those living in Small Island States heritage.

In navigating an uncertain future, traditional owners need to be consulted in the early planning stages of projects and actions that will affect them. Indigenous voices and local communities, including on climate change, need to be included within ICOMOS and at a community level, not just in government-to-government consultation, and projects need to be designed and implemented in partnership with Indigenous People. Three resolutions on the related issues of culturenature, climate change and Indigenous inclusion were adopted by ICOMOS in 2023: the Resolution on Climate Change and Indigenous Heritage; the Resolution on Indigenous Peoples’ Inclusion throughout ICOMOS; and the Resolution Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Values and Interconnections between Culture and Nature in the Outstanding Universal Value of World Heritage Sites. These resolutions inform ICOMOS policy and action, and encourage Indigenous voices and perspectives in ICOMOS, and together emphasize the commitment of ICOMOS to addressing these important issues.

ICOMOS proposes that this reflection on Culture and Climate Action should not miss the chance to draw on the outputs of the International Co-Sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change (the “Meeting”).  The proposal for the Meeting, first put forward by ICOMOS, was agreed by the Co-Chairs of the Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), endorsed by the IPCC Executive Committee in June 2020, with co-sponsorship confirmed by UNESCO in July 2020, following which a collaborative concept note for the meeting was finalized. The Meeting was held virtually over five days from 6–10 December 2021. The Meeting was co-sponsored by IPCC, UNESCO and ICOMOS, in partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI).

Regarding the need to build the case for the role of culture in climate action, we draw your attention to the three White Papers that were commissioned in connection with the Meeting. These papers bring a scientific rigor (including an Indigenous Science approach) to the explanation of culture’s contribution to climate adaptation and mitigation, as well as resilience building.  Of particular note is White Paper III on “The role of cultural and natural heritage for climate action”.

In a world beset by crises, why is preserving our cultural heritage important?  Culture lies at the heart of our human history and identity. It is integral to who we are. The actual and potential loss of these anchor points are deeply felt but can also act as a powerful impetus for resilience and action.

Culture can also be a resource in responding to climate change. The majority of human history is from pre-carbon times and lessons from past and living cultures who exist more sustainably can aid both carbon mitigation and climate adaptation strategies.

The value of traditional knowledge for climate action is acknowledged in Article 7 of the Paris Agreement which highlights its value for climate adaptation.

Climate change will – to some degree – have an impact on all aspects of our lives. Culture is equally embedded and entangled in society and so intersects with climate change in a myriad of diverse ways. The cultural heritage sector is uniquely situated to respond in a proactive, place-based and human-centered manner.   
Some examples include:
Cultural heritage – both tangible and intangible – is currently suffering loss and damage due to the impacts of climate change. Current discussions on support and compensation must be inclusive of these losses which are very hard to quantify. Cultural heritage professionals have a unique role to play in these discussions. 
‍Traditional land-use and building practices can aid in carbon mitigation, promoting more resilient and sustainable landscape management strategies and lower carbon more energy efficient buildings. Past and present adaptation strategies can also inform contemporary adaptation planning, reducing risks of maladaptation and promoting community inclusion. Cultural heritage professionals must advocate for the inclusion of culture based climate action at national and international levels. 
Urgent climate action is needed to prevent catastrophic loss and damage. Cultural heritage is emotive and has immense communicative power. As heritage professionals, we can tell stories and utilize culture to encourage and inspire wider societal action and change. Cultural heritage professionals can speak about climate change in a unique and personal way, promoting wider climate action.