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July 2017 | In Sickness and In Health
In the past decade, the threat of climate change has received increasing aen-
tion in ocial heritage discourse. Holistic studies on the relationship between
climate change and heritage are therefore still few and far between. From the
vantage point of archaeologists and heritage professionals, David Harvey and
Jim Perry’s edited volume, e Future of Heritage as Climates Change: Loss, Adap-
tation and Creativity, is an essential read that provides an innovative theoretical
framework and applied case studies to ll the knowledge gap in understand-
ing this nexus. Rodney Harrison’s (2012) dialogical model of heritage sets the
premise for the book; that is, heritage is a dynamic process where cultural and
natural processes—or humanity’s impacts on nature and vice versa—are deeply
connected and must be understood for successful conservation and reection
of societal values. In this vein, the loss and uncertainty that climate change
poses need not be negative, but an element to consider when adapting heritage.
Furthermore, the editors argue that eective conservation in the age of the
Anthropocene requires an in-depth analysis at both temporal and spatial
scales. eir temporal framework strives to be more circular than the oen
“linear temporal framework…within heritage and climate change studies”
that is centred on the present, as a means to consider “the contingency and
politics of how past, present and future are woven together in an uncertain
future” (page 14). is innovative aim therefore steers away from what most
archaeologists are familiar with insofar as established elds of environmen-
tal archaeology are concerned. Spatially, the chapters reect the geograph-
e Future of Heritage as Climates Change: Loss, Adaptation and Creativity
Edited by David C. Harvey and Jim Perry
2015. New York: Routledge
Hbk. 286 pp. 53 B/w illus.
ISBN: 978-1-138-78183-2
Reviewed by Rebecca Haboucha
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 32.1
132 | Book Reviews: The Future of Heritage as Climates Change
ical breadth of climate change. Case studies include the United Kingdom, the
United States, India, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Colombia, Israel, Turk-
menistan and China. Each chapter addresses the power dynamics embedded
in the implementation of international and national policies and emphasizes
the importance of dismantling the divide between heritage professionals, pol-
icymakers and the public to arrive at new heritage decision-making processes.
e volume is divided into two parts: the rst (Chapters Two–Eight) focuses
on dierent ontologies of climate change and heritage, while the second (Chap-
ters Nine–15) relates to varied responses in policy, dynamic processes and ways
forward. For the most part, the volume maintains a coherent chronological
sequence throughout: the chapters weigh their focus on the historical, present
and future approaches, respectively. To start, Chapters Two and ree address
the historical contingency of climate change. Rose Ferraby’s case study of the
Jurassic Coast in the United Kingdom outlines how one can appreciate future
understandings of heritage to include changes to the landscape. Chapter ree
provides unique insight into the heritage-climate change nexus by looking
at the heritage of perceptions of climate science itself from the nineteenth
century to today within Germany. Chapters Four, Five and Six are just a few
of the chapters that draw on the prevalence of local knowledge in approach-
ing climate change with concerns to heritage. All three chapters purport that
going into the future, “local, lay or ‘experiential’ weather is assuming new
importance” for understanding perceptions of climate change, in addition to
traditionally accepted scientic knowledge (page 73). Chapters Five and Six
relay similar messages, but specically through the lens of Indigenous Ecolog-
ical Knowledge in India and Australia, respectively. In comparison, Chapter
Eight is tangential to the rest of the volume. While interesting, Cevasco et al.’s
case study of chestnut tree landscapes in Liguria, Italy, is not linked explic-
itly to historic environmental change, but changing human requirements.
e second section includes chapters that are long overdue in challenging the
international heritage industry, and mainly UNESCO’s, approach to the climate
change issue. e central theme weaving between each chapter is: given that
climate change will continue to inict danger on cultural and natural heritage, how
should humanity best mitigate and adapt to such changes? In Chapter Nine, Diane
Barthel-Bouchier provides a comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and
problems arising from the introduction of the climate change mission to interna-
July 2017 | In Sickness and In Health
133
Rebecca Haboucha |
tional heritage discourse. While the motives of international heritage frameworks
can be discerned by reading between the lines, her novel approach successfully
deconstructs the evolution of climate change’s presence in heritage legislation
and guidelines, in addition to evolving motives for its inclusion. e conundrum
between heritage tourism and climate change is particularly pertinent to today’s
climate. Most stirring is her postulation that the notion of ‘sustainable tourism’
is covering up for the ecological cost of tourism, and the politics it involves.
Chapter 13 explores built heritage through earth buildings. e unstable and
changing nature of these buildings challenges the ‘conserve as found’ model still
endemic to the ascription of a World Heritage Site. UNESCO will not ascribe
a building to the List of World Heritage if its Outstanding Universal Value is
threatened, and Chapter 14 provides insight into the limitations this presents
to protecting areas of rapid development, in this case, Hong Kong and China.
Arguing that buildings are important for enhancing social interactions and mit-
igating climate change, Esther Yung and Edwin Chan propose that the potential
threats climate change imposes on a site should be recorded as part of the herit-
age designation process, as opposed to discriminating the site from ascription.
ere are some limitations in geographic scope and dimensional consider-
ations of the dialogical process of heritage. With regards to the former, South
America is neglected throughout the book. It was also striking to nd that
there was no reference to locations where climate change is most exacerbated,
including the ree Poles—the North Pole, South Pole and the Himalayas. One
element ignored in the dialogical process between culture and nature is the Ani-
malia Kingdom. ere is no allusion to human interactions with animals, and
the comparison between endangered species and heritage could have acted
as a useful analogy. While Chapters Seven and 12 refer to conserving biodi-
versity in manners that maintain faunal and oral diversity, and incur the least
amount of stress on essential human economic and sustenance activities such
as agriculture, human’s relationality to animals as part of heritage, although
crucial in some cases, is not referenced. is shortfall may be symptomatic of
the volume’s focus on broad processes of weather and landscape as heritage.
On the whole, the volume is largely successful in bringing an impressive number
of issues on the new and growing eld of the climate change, and heritage to the
fore. Seing heritage as a process, it explores the complexities between natural
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 32.1
134 | Book Reviews: The Future of Heritage as Climates Change
and cultural processes and heritage sites, in addition to how power dynamics
are interwoven into this relationship. e editors conclude that in the age of the
Anthropocene, where climate change is a constant threat to humanity and herit-
age, eective conservation can only arise through heritage as a malleable concept.
Harvey and Perry’s volume is invaluable to Routledge’s Key Issues in Cultural Her-
itage series. eir pioneering approach to the heritage-climate change process
oers an essential read for archaeologists and heritage professionals alike.
References:
Harrison, R. 2012. Heritage: Critical Approaches. London: Routledge.