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Brenda Barrett, Editor | Eleanor Mahoney, Associate Editor | Deanna Beacham, Outreach Assistant
June 2020 | Vol. 10, No. 5
Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes
All landscapes are affected by our rapidly changing climate. As a result, it can be hard to disentangle specific impacts on places of cultural value. Perhaps the best we can do is look at cultural landscapes as bellwethers - places that catch people’s attention and serve as predictors of larger scale threats to come.

The U.S. National Park Service has done an admirable job in its 2016 publication, Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy, which outlines the risks to a range of resources including cultural landscapes. It identifies very specific impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea level, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Unsurprisingly, for cultural landscapes, all of these factors had potentially serious consequences.

What is very welcome is to see cultural values getting serious consideration, as earlier NPS plans, starting in 2010, focused more on the impacts on natural resources. For more on cultural heritage and climate change, see the article in this newsletter on the Stemming the Tide Symposium as well as our interview with Dr. Marcy Rockman.
About Us
The Living Landscape Observer is a website, blog and monthly e-newsletter that offers commentary and information on the emerging field of large landscape conservation.
The Stemming the Tide Symposium and Other Strategies to Consider Climate Change and Cultural Heritage
On March 5, 2020, just as the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the world, the Smithsonian sponsored a symposium to tackle two important perspectives on the impact of the climate crisis on cultural heritage - the threat to the resources from climate change and the value of these resources as a source of resilience to address climate change.

The gathering at the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art brought together a lineup of inspiring speakers to empower cultural heritage authorities, managers, and advocates to pursue more ambitious engagement and collaborative approaches to the threat of climate change. This symposium builds on decades of work on climate change, which are briefly reviewed in this post. Its call for action is more urgent than ever.
Interview with Dr. Marcy Rockman
Interested in learning more about the intersection of climate change and cultural heritage? Read our interview with Dr. Marcy Rockman, an archaeologist with experience in national and international climate change policy.

Dr. Rockman is currently working with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) as Scientific Coordinator for a project to improve incorporation of heritage in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). From 2011 - 2018, she served as the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources.
NatureCultures Dialogue: The Theory of NatureCultures Integration
In this NatureCultures dialogue, Je-Hun Ryu and Fran Han point to the problem of using the concept behind World Heritage "cultural landscape" in Korea and China respectively. They argue it follows a modern Western/European idea of nature as separate from culture. The authors explain the historical background in their own contexts of an undivided nature-culture paradigm, and where humans are understood as part of the natural world. 
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World Rural Landscapes Principles: Communicating and transmitting the heritage and values of rural landscapes  
In this final issue, we consider the essential need to communicate with the general public about the World Rural Landscape principles. And also, to show how heritage values in rural landscapes have been identified and protected through collaborative planning, research, and action on the ground that engages and involves all parties.
News and Notes

This post on the Lawfare site notes that while the global shutdown is likely to result in  a 4-7 percent decrease in annual carbon dioxide emissions   this year, it is not enough to solve our climate change woes. What have we learned from the pandemic  about possibilities for the future?

This story map traces the Colorado River on its 1,450 mile journey from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to its mouth in the Gulf of California. Along the way, the river’s flows are dammed and diverted to support an astounding quantity and variety of human and non-human needs.
 Upcoming Events

The following conferences have been rescheduled!

Visit the event web sits for the latest information.

January 7-15, 2021, in Marseille, France 

October 2023, in Sydney, Australia
NATURE, CULTURE,COMMUNITY www.livinglandscapeobserver.net