Climate change threats to cultural heritage under the magnifying glass

This conference, hosted by the European Association of Development Agencies, presented the outcomes of the Cultural Heritage Protection in Climate Change online project (CHePiCC online), an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership that focuses on many aspects related to the protection of cultural heritage, such as education and training. In addition, it provided a space for raising awareness on the importance of enhancing European cultural heritage and landscape protection in climate change, tools for vulnerability and impact assessment, preparedness measures, risk mitigation and management. Roundtables on topics such as training and capacity building, the opportunities offered by the European Cooperation, namely by the Union Civil Protection Mechanism - UCPM, as well as impact and vulnerability assessments prompted the reflection on possible progress to be made in these areas.

A last panel of discussion dealt with risk mitigation and management and allowed Ms Veronica Piacentini, PROCULTHER-NET expert from the Italian Civil Protection Department, to introduce the audience to the UCPM main features and to the composition, mandate and main requirements of the specialised capacity focused on cultural heritage protection that project partner countries have proposed for its embedding in the Mechanism. 

Participation in a valuable exchange of thoughts on these topics confirmed that the growing impact of climate-related hazards is requiring greater attention and engagement of the PROCULTHER-NET Partners and stakeholders to contribute to the efforts to identify and exchange innovative practices and measures for the protection of cultural heritage facing these threats, also with the involvement of the scientific and academic sector, also through the strengthening of knowledge transfer and interdisciplinary exchange of expertise between disaster risk managers and cultural heritage experts in this field.