Climate change (also) threatens our cultural heritage

When we talk about climate change, the debate usually centres on energy, biodiversity, carbon emissions or the economic costs of the transition. But another aspect of the problem remains largely underestimated: the impact of climate change on our cultural heritage.

43 per cent of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe are currently highly exposed to extreme weather events, flooding and rising sea levels. Our research arrives at this estimate by applying the climate risk quantification methodologies developed at the EDHEC Climate Institute to relevant physical assets sourced from the UNESCO spatial database.

This vulnerability does not affect only a few iconic sites, such as Venice, or certain historic centres in the Mediterranean. It affects the whole of Europe’s cultural infrastructure, including less visible artefacts, which are often scattered amongst churches, libraries, local collections or small museums.

The risks are already very real. Artworks and museum collections are directly exposed to flooding, fluctuations in humidity, heatwaves and failures affecting conservation systems. A survey of American art museums reveals that 35 per cent of directors report having already suffered climate-related damage, whilst 50 per cent say they have put specific plans in place to address these risks. In France, the Louvre Museum has, in fact, begun transferring around 250,000 works to its Liévin Conservation Centre, in Pas-de-Calais, in order to protect the national collections from the risk of flooding.

There are many major threats:

• increased humidity and the growth of mould affecting paintings and frescoes;
• the deterioration of materials due to temperature fluctuations;
• the increase in acid rain;
• and the rise in the number of fires, floods and landslides.

Even music is affected

Musical heritage itself is not immune to this climate-related fragility.

The manufacture of musical instruments depends on natural resources that are particularly vulnerable to global warming. The tonewood spruce from the Val di Fiemme in the Dolomites (Italy), historically used for Stradivarius violins, is now threatened by rising temperatures and the spread of pests.

The woods used for bows and stringed instruments are also becoming scarcer due to water stress and deforestation.

Concert halls and opera houses are also directly at risk. In Venice, climate projections suggest that by 2100, the increase in episodes of ‘acqua alta’ could make it impossible to maintain normal operations at La Fenice opera house.

Other major cultural venues located in coastal areas could face similar challenges: the Royal Festival Hall (London, UK), Harpa (Reykjavik, Iceland), the Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia), the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg, Germany) and the Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ (Amsterdam, Netherlands).

A major economic shock

Added to this cultural fragility is another challenge: the economic capacity to fund the protection of these heritage sites.

Our macroeconomic projections show that some major European cultural regions could suffer significant economic losses by the end of the century as a result of climate-related physical risks. The impacts on local gross regional product (the equivalent of local GDP) are particularly pronounced in Mediterranean cities. By 2100, losses could reach 32 per cent in Madrid and up to 41 per cent in Rome, a level significantly higher than that estimated at national level, where Italy’s GDP decline is projected at 19 per cent. Other major European capitals are also severely affected, with losses estimated at 13 per cent in Vienna and 18 per cent in Berlin.

This paradox is key: it is precisely at the moment when the investment required to protect our heritage will be greatest that financial resources may be most limited.

Climate as a cultural issue

For a long time, climate change was viewed as a problem relating to natural resources or energy balances. It is now also emerging as a cultural and civilisational issue.

It raises questions about our relationship with cultural transmission, collective memory and the preservation of assets that can neither be reproduced nor replaced.

The difficulty lies in the fact that it is not merely a matter of protecting objects or buildings, but of preserving the physical conditions that enable the continuity of history, heritage and artistic creation.

Irreplaceable cultural artefacts

Classical and neoclassical economics have historically been based on the assumption of substitutability of factors of production (see David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say and Robert Solow): natural resources that are destroyed, depleted or becoming scarce could be offset by increased capital accumulation, productive investment or technical progress. Although heavily criticised, this assumption of substitutability remains one of the central pillars of a large proportion of contemporary macroeconomic models.

This approach reaches an obvious limit when it comes to cultural heritage. A fresco destroyed by damp cannot be replaced. An ancient mosaic damaged by thermal stress or acid rain cannot be recreated identically. A submerged archaeological site is lost irreversibly. It is precisely this notion of irreversibility that distinguishes cultural heritage from other categories of economic goods.

This contradiction between economic expansion and environmental limits does not necessarily lead to a historical impasse. The ‘possibilist’ economic approach (inherited in particular from Paul Vidal de La Blache) reminds us that human societies never develop independently of their environment. Nature imposes a set of constraints and possibilities with which economic organisations must contend. This perspective breaks with the idea of potentially unlimited growth and reintroduces the material reality of ecological conditions into economic analysis.

From a more dialectical perspective, close to Hegelian thought, ecological and energy crises can also be interpreted as a moment of profound transformation for industrial societies. The current tensions open up the possibility of moving beyond the status quo: a reorientation of production systems, the integration of ecological constraints into economic rationality, a redefinition of the criteria for prosperity, and a renewal of forms of technical progress. Preserving our collective heritage is still possible, but the window of opportunity is closing.

This article by Anthony Schrapffer, Scientific Director of the EDHEC Climate Institute, and Camille Angué, Director of the EDHEC Climate Institute, has been republished (in French) from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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