The effects on intangible cultural heritage arising from climate change adaptation

Climate change adaptation has increasingly been a topic of much discussion, due to the worsening effects of a changing climate and heightened awareness of the implications of adaptation and adaptive capacities in different places. Climate change adaptation, according to Satterthwaite et al (n.d.), is to reduce risks from the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.

Adapting to the impacts of climate change can prove extremely tricky, adapting to both the direct and indirect impacts. People adapt differently, to different situations and in different ways. And people adapt in different forms too; meaning, the manner of their adaptation is not the same.

Adaptation produces a myriad of outcomes. People move and sometimes relocate, they adapt to crises like food shortages and find substitutes for ingredients and materials. People give up or stop eating certain foods due to potential loss of sources caused by climate change; people make other compromises and sacrifices because of new limitations and constraints placed on them so that their cultures do not die off completely.

The tourism industry is a complex one, and that has also meant that climate change adaptation needs to consider more sophisticated and targeted approaches. The multi-faceted nature of the tourism industry, made more challenging by the different types and scale of impacts caused by climate change, calls for a targeted and differentiated manner in adapting to climatic changes. What this mean also, is that a multi-stakeholder approach is necessary. Climate change affects tourism directly and indirectly, and it is the indirect ways that are more difficult to define and take actions against.

Climate Change Adaptation in Tourism

According to the United Nations, tourism extends beyond leisure travelling and includes purposes such as education, business and healthcare. It is necessary to acknowledge intangible forms of tourism such as cultural and heritage tourism, which will be the main focus of this article. Tourism has also been contended to be a catalyst for community development and poverty reduction, but the notion of it is still an ongoing debate (Scott, Gossling and Hall, 2012). If this is true, then the discussion of climate change would then be pivotal in communities that are both vulnerable to climate change and heavily reliant on both tangible and intangible resources as tourist attractions (Scott et al., 2012).

Wong et al (2013:204) classified climate change impacts into 4 main categories – “direct impacts, indirect environmental impacts, impacts on tourist mobility and indirect impacts on society”. Direct impacts see alterations in tourism flow and movements. Extreme weather patterns, damaged landscapes and infrastructures may threaten tourists’ safety, discouraging visits to affected areas. Indirect environmental impacts on the other hand, are consequential outcomes of the direct impacts. Changes in extreme weather patterns for instance, may bring about issues such as floods, water scarcity for the locals, permanent damages to ecosystems and increase in vector-borne diseases (ibid).

Additionally, tourists are not only vulnerable to and deterred by erratic and unpredictable weathers, tourist mobility may also be discouraged when a destination imposes high carbon taxes to manage air quality by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (ibid). While these mitigation policies are imposed with overall good intentions, poor execution may do more damage than good and even involuntarily shut its doors to tourism.

Collectively, inconsistent tourism flow and revenues have detrimental impacts on a community’s economic growth, development and even political stability (Wong et al., 2013). As mentioned, climate change influences tourists’ destination choices, season of travel and also the duration of stay (Machailidou, Vlachokostas, Moussiopoulos, 2016). Such seasonality and differences in tourists’ movement and demand patterns can work towards or against the effectiveness and sustainability of tourism businesses in profit generation and community development (Machailidou et al., 2016). Consequently, more communities are recognising the need for climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies to ensure more stable, long-term accruals that tourism can bring.

In response to climate change, UNESCO proposed a three-part strategy to preserve World Heritage that includes: preventive and corrective actions and knowledge sharing. This strategy focuses on the processes essential for transiting communities into efficiently coping with the impacts of climate change. It recognises that for effective implementation of any climate change adaptation efforts, it requires stakeholders at every level getting involved in monitoring and research, active participation and cooperation, as well as effective communication and capacity building (Kim, 2011).

Five main adaptation categories have been proposed by Wong et al. (2013), mainly “technical, business management, behavioural, policy and research and education” (ibid: 56). These categories address both hardware and software of resources, looking at what can be done to equip the physical, commercial, political, behavioural and education environments to handle and adapt to climate change.

Taking reference from a case study done on climate change adaptation in the South Pacific region, Wong et al. (2013) argues that tourism operators in the area are mostly small, hence governments play a pivotal role in supporting climate change adaptation efforts. Therefore, while it is crucial to fund climate change adaptation research, it is as important if not more so, to analyse and study the public policy environment, to further complement the tourism sector’s adaptative competency.

As illustrated, climate change adaptation in tourism is a multi-faceted endeavour that requires high cooperation on all levels in order to advance any adaptation initiatives. While guidelines have been set out, not only does stakeholder cooperation matter, but also their commitment and the duration to which cooperation and support exists.

Climate change increasingly calls for attention as more communities realise the irreversible damages it can cause, especially on finite resources that tourism depends heavily on. This is especially so for cultures and heritage that are at risk of disappearing, communities will then have to continually pump in efforts to ensure the sustainability of such intangible resources. The next section explores the impacts of climate change on intangible cultural heritage.

Intangible cultural heritage and climate risks

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) largely refers to the immaterial manifestations of culture, like ideas, knowledge, practices, rituals, skills, tastes, etc. Lenzerini (2011) asserted that they represent the variety of living heritage of humanity and are also the most important vehicle of cultural diversity. Kim (2011) contends that the effects of climate change on intangible cultural heritage such as the loss of oral tradition and languages have been receiving less attention than that on tangible cultural heritage.

One reason for the importance of intangible cultural heritage in many societies’ culture, is the risks it faces these days of being extinct. Modernisation, globalisation, urbanisation (which is also a result of modernisation) and now increasingly climate change, all threaten to put intangible cultural heritage at risk. Such expressions of history, culture and heritage is now increasingly in urgent need of protection and preservation, as different risks converge to threaten to alter not only the form but also the manner it exists.

Much has been written about the risks and threats climate change has on cultural heritage; increasingly, more attention is being paid to the intangible side of cultural heritage. The link between climatic changes and intangible cultural heritage deserves more discourse and research; as changes in climate moves people away from their homes, reduces livestock and materials, such changes in the way people live has definitely some effects on their cultures, and also the intangible aspects of cultures. Therefore, climate-change threats to cultural heritage sites are increasingly recognized as a threat to society at large (Cassar 2005; Erlandson 2008; Fitzpatrick et al. 2015, in Hambrecht and Rockman, 2017).

Climate change adaptation’s effects on Intangible Cultural Heritage

Climate change adaptation’s impacts on cultural heritage, especially ICH, is increasingly being something worth investigating and understanding. Cultural heritage, especially the intangible side of it, presents itself as a potentially interesting object of study when it comes to examining what climatic changes can do to people and their societies. ICH exists in the form of arts, livelihoods, rituals, food, crafts etc. Intangible cultural heritage depends on specific resources (including food ingredients and materials) and sometimes very old ways of doing things; at times, it depends on specific skills, which in turn depends on the presence of certain intangible resources like the weather. 

Adaptation to climatic changes is perhaps most impactful to the vulnerable communities, of which intangible cultural heritage is also often associated with. These communities are often the ones that tend to possess weaker tools to combat against climate change, and so adaptation is even more important.

If adaptation requires a change in the way people live, the way things are done, and perhaps the traditional ways of life, then the important question to ask is; does intangible cultural heritage risk disappearing as adaptation to climate change becomes more widespread and complex?

Climate change adaptation involves living in a way that you get used to the new truths. The trade-offs experienced by climatic changes (which includes adaptation) affect the way cultural heritage is preserved, because it affects the way (how) resources are used, the manner which resources are preserved or conserved, and even the types of resources used. The effects on changing aspects of living out the culture, to adapt to new boundaries and limitations caused by climate change, can have significant or important changes onto ICH.

Adaptation may risk containing actions or approaches that potentially disrupts and gradually destroys intangible cultural heritage without many indicators. To add to that, adaptation is still something fairly new in the policy arena.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development points out that adaptation is about-and must build from-the actions of people, especially the poorest people who are the most vulnerable and most likely to actively adapt' (IISD et al, 2003: 1 in Labadi and Long, 2010). There could be hardly any reliable ways to accurately measure the impacts of climate change adaptation on cultural heritage. What we are interested instead, is to look at possible impacts (less of measuring them) that can arise from adaptation. 

On the other hand, it may increase the resilience of preservation and conservation efforts by those affected. Adaptation that could be due to new limits set upon the locals might result in a greater attempt in protecting and conserving parts of the heritage. New ways of conservation may be borne,

Indigenious people can often be found in places experiencing climate change adaptation, and Nakashima et al (2012) recognised that such groups of people are increasingly recognized as possessing considerable knowledge on issues related to adaptation. For adaptation to be successful, engagement with local indigenious knowledge is important. To better understand the impacts adaptation has on ICH, and to identify the potential positive impacts, engagement with local communities is thus important.

Implications of the cultural aspects of adaptation on ICH

The role culture plays in how places carry out climate change adaptation is significant; the protection of intangible cultural heritage against similar types of climate risks, may manifest itself differently in different places.

Adaptation practices potentially can help reduce various types of vulnerabilities experienced by some communities, but that could heighten the loss of ICH. Climate change adaptation is largely potentially cultural based, and that means how ICH is affected by adaptation will be different in different places. That also means, that adaptation potentially changes the way culture is being preserved and passed down and perhaps how vulnerability is viewed and treated.

Adapting to climate change may potentially be a big part not only on how intangible cultural heritage is being preserved, but also how it is produced, “consumed” and passed down to future generations. There is much possibility that adaptation impacts to ICH may lead to better adaptation practices that may foster improved measures to safeguard ICH. Thomas and Twyman (2003) stated that the discourses around climate change vulnerability rarely focus on people and their potential. It is this potential that is important for the protection of ICH. Adaptation therefore potentially helps improve safeguarding measures, as those measures are vital to the preservation of ICH.

Conclusion

The link between climate change adaptation and intangible cultural heritage will only get stronger, as efforts to preserve the intangible aspects of culture becomes challenged increasingly by adaptation efforts. The impacts of adaptation on ICH is largely a two-way relationship, that potentially also serves to improve the understanding of adaptation in places where cultural heritage is an important and precious commodity.    

Author Kevin Phun, practitioner and lecturer in Sustainable tourism, with contributions by Jael Teh, Murdoch University graduate.

References

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