Paper short abstract:

In this lecture I will outline the genesis of the cultural climate adaptation initiative, it’s working methods, resources and goals, and explain how members are building alliances with science, city administration and activists.

Paper long abstract:

Recently the value and role of culture in climate discourse has gained much deserved attention in politics and science. Last autumn the German Climate Alliance, representing 150 NGOs, issued a discussion paper, urging that, “as long as climate protection measures are not designed to be culturally sensitive, they can not be optimally effective. Valuable cultural resources remain unused.” This is even more true for the transformative challenges of climate adaptation and recovery.

So while awareness is growing for the necessity of culturally informed approaches in adaptation and recovery (Nunn 2019, Marks 2022, Sherpa 2022) there is a crucial lack of best case examples for practical implementation. Thus I created a network of cultural institutions in currently seven coastal metropolises worldwide to address adaptation challenges to sea level rise and land subsidence. Since 2024 the members are targeting urban front line communities in various socio-cultural and educational projects addressing issues like loss and grieve, displacement, tidal living and urban future scenarios. In three cities these will be accompanied and evaluated by social scientists in a research project called “Sinking Cities: Cultural Heritage as a transformational resource”

In this lecture I will outline the genesis of the network, it’s working methods, resources and goals, and explain how members are building alliances with science, city administration and activists. I will also offer glimpses into the openly accessible archive of cultural adaptation resources currently in the making.