ABSTRACT
Rather than examining the effects of climate change (as a one-dimensional ‘problem’) on heritage (as a stable entity), a key ambition of this collection has been to explore the relationship between climate change and heritage as a dynamic, emergent and contested political nexus of power, humility and hope. Reflecting our call in Chapter 1, this endeavour necessarily involves the exploration of relational processes, as both climate change and heritage are traced as thoroughly dialogical phenomena, in which boundaries between culture and nature, here and there, are blurred. Crucially, these ongoing relations must be understood within the context of power dynamics that are all too human, in which claims to authority and expertise are not always straightforward and in which complexities of scale – both temporal and spatial – are all too real. In tracing these connections of heritage and climate change, we have sought to present the issue not as a ‘problem’ that requires remedial action and ‘mitigation’ but as an ongoing dialogue that calls for a creative sense of innovation and ethical commitment to have transformative potential. Profoundly, that is not a fatalist sense of acceptance or a call to ‘do nothing’. Indeed, the threat we perceive is an approach that seeks to ‘mitigate’ without challenging the essentialist notions of stability that lie behind so many dreams of sustaining the status quo. As Krauß (Chapter 3) makes clear, a more nuanced understanding of (historically sensitive) political context, together with a large dose of humility, is vital if we are to avoid pitfalls.
