Cultural heritage

Key messages

Europe’s cities are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. High concentrations of buildings and impervious surfaces can intensify heat stress through the urban heat island effect, while also increasing the risk of surface water flooding during heavy rainfall events. As temperatures continue to rise, extreme weather becomes more frequent, and the share of the EU population living in urban areas is projected to exceed 83%, the need for climate-resilient cities has never been greater.
The European Union has established a range of policies and initiatives to support urban adaptation, including the EU Adaptation Strategy and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. These frameworks are complemented by tools and knowledge resources that help cities assess vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience, such as the Copernicus’ Urban Atlas and the Urban Adaptation Support Tool. Through programmes such as Horizon Europe, the EU also provides financial and technical support to accelerate the development and implementation of innovative urban adaptation solutions. As a major initiative, the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change supports European regions and communities to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change and build climate resilience by 2030.

Why climate change adaptation matters for the Cultural heritage sector

Europe’s cultural heritage is a rich and diverse mosaic of cultural and creative expressions, an inheritance from previous generations of Europeans and a legacy for those to come. The UNESCO definition of cultural heritage includes artefacts, monuments, a group of buildings and sites, museums that have a diversity of values including symbolic, historic, artistic, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological, scientific and social significance. It includes tangible heritage (movable, immobile and underwater), intangible cultural heritage embedded into cultural, and natural heritage artefacts, sites or monuments.

The impacts of extreme weather events on this heritage such as extreme precipitation events, flooding, landslides, and droughts have impacts on cultural heritage sites, including historical parks and gardens. They are coupled with the slow onset of changes arising from deterioration processes. Continuous increase and fluctuations in temperature and humidity or fluctuations in freeze (thaw cycles) cause degradation and stress in materials. That leads to a greater need for restoration and conservation. Biological degradation is more likely to occur: caused by microorganisms, for example in the form of mould and algal growth, and insect infestations, the physical fabric of buildings and the collections of galleries, libraries, archives and museums are being attacked. This can also lead to a potential income reduction due to the loss of tourism revenue.

There is little in-depth knowledge about the impacts of the climate crisis on practices, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities, groups and sometimes individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. Rapidly increasing, simultaneous or concurrent extreme events are in the focus of climate science. However, the consequences of concurrent catastrophic events for the whole cultural heritage sector have not yet been adequately dealt with or investigated – this is now a major source of concern.

Cultural heritage is also vulnerable to maladaptation, when inadvertent loss or damage is caused by adaptation measures.