Paper short abstract:

We will discuss recent findings from a partnership project that aims to share a diversity of perspectives on cultural heritage for risk assessment. We challenge the western perspectives, tools and discourse that drives climate and disaster risk assessment and largely ignores local knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Cultural Heritage shapes our identity, delivers capacities and exposes vulnerabilities yet community derived perspectives on cultural value, significance and vulnerability are missing from conventional risk assessments that support sustainable development and growth. This presentation will discuss the preliminary findings from an UK Government and Research Council urgency project called CRITICAL. Working in partnership across Indonesia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka the CRITICAL project combines heritage management, cultural geography and climate risk research to: 1) identify the key parameters for cultural heritage impact assessment; 2) deliver an impact modelling approach to inform risk information for decision-making, and 3) share resulting tools and learning through capacity building and research for policy. Drawing on recent community based fieldwork across three case studies as well as systematic literature reviews this presentation will address the first aim of the project. We will share a diversity of contextual cultural value framings for impact assessments that can contribute to risk management and climate change adaptation policy development and implementation.