The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging Cultural Heritage in Climate Action

This e-book discusses the potential of heritage practices in supporting climate action. It can be accessed at the website of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

The e-book was prepared under the guidance of ICOMOS’s Climate Change and Heritage Working Group (CCHWG). It is a compilation of essays and analyses that cut across themes of heritage conservation and climate change. The e-book is addressed to heritage communities, climate scientists, climate change professionals and policy makers.

ICOMOS is dedicated to the development of common doctrines for the protection of cultural heritage sites and monuments, the evolution and circulation of knowledge, the creation of improved conservation techniques, and the promotion of cultural heritage significance.

This unique non-governmental, democratic not-for-profit international organisation is associated with UNESCO, as an Advisory Body of the World Heritage Committee for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. The creation of ICOMOS in 1965 is the outcome of initial conversations between architects, historians and international experts that began in the early twentieth century and eventually materialized in the adoption of the Venice Charter in 1964.

Some of the areas discussed in the e-book are:

• Equity and climate justice
• Establishing core competencies of cultural heritage practice
• Integration of cultural heritage management with climate science in policy