Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the water shortage at the island of Öland, from 2016 and onwards, are experienced among actors in the World Heritage of Southern Öland, and how the events caused by water shortage shape these actors’ ways of relating to the landscape and imagining the future and the past.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2000 the Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in the category of cultural landscapes. It is the agricultural landscape that is the subject of the conservation efforts and it is the landowners – the farmers – on southern Öland that maintain the world heritage. The category of cultural landscapes represents various expressions of successful interactions between humankind and its environment. The interaction that is emphasized in the case of Öland is the adaptation of the way of life to the physical constraints of the island. During the last five years this interaction has proven rather difficult due to water shortage. In 2016 the groundwater levels were historically low and the extremely warm and dry summer of 2018 left some farmers in a poor economic situation and a landscape that is still marked by the lack of water; leaving for instance pasture that cannot be grazed.

Drawing on interviews with farmers and officials at the municipality within the World Heritage site this paper examines how the water shortage and drought at the island of Öland are experienced by these actors, and how events caused by the water shortage affect their ways of relating to the landscape and imagining both the future and the past. It also discusses possibilities and limitations of heritage work during a crisis caused by climate change in the Anthropocene era and of heritage work as means for facing uncertain futures.