Heritage and Resilience: Issues and Opportunities for Reducing Disaster Risks

This paper examines the unique role of cultural heritage in disaster risk reduction. Itintroduces various approaches to protect heritage from irreplaceable loss and considers ways to draw upon heritage as an asset in building the resilience of communities and nations to disasters. The paper proposes ways forward and builds on the current momentum provided by the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters” (HFA) and the advancement of a post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction (HFA2) and the post-2015 development agenda. Cultural heritage is often associated with grandiose monuments and iconic archaeological sites that can hold us in awe of their beauty, history and sheer scale. However, the understanding of cultural heritage has undergone a marked shift during the last few decades in terms of what it is, why it is important, why it is at risk and what can be done to protect it. Cultural heritage today encompasses a broader array of places such as historic cities, living cultural landscapes, gardens or sacred forests and mountains, technological or industrial achievements in the recent past and even sites associated with painful memories and war. Collections of movable and immoveable items within sites, museums, historic properties and archives have also increased significantly in scope, testifying not only to the lifestyles of royalty and the achievements of great artists, but also to the everyday lives of ordinary people. At the same time intangibles such as knowledge, beliefs and value systems are fundamental aspects of heritage that have a powerful influence on people’s daily choices and behaviors. Heritage is at risk due to disasters, conflict, climate change and a host of other factors.At the same time, cultural heritage is increasingly recognized as a driver of resilience that can support efforts to reduce disaster risks more broadly. Recent years have seen greater emphasis and commitment to protecting heritage and leveraging it for resilience;but initiatives, such as the few examples that are presented here, need to be encouraged and brought more fully into the mainstream of both disaster risk reduction and heritage management. These are issues that can be productively addressed in a post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction and, likewise, in the post-2015 development agenda

Rapid urbanisation and security: Holistic approach to enhancing security of urban spaces

Rapid urbanisation, particularly driven by rural-urban migration, can pose a wide range of security challenges in the global south and global north. The management of such a transition, in terms of the provision of social goods and quality of life raises significant challenges. Security of contemporary urban environments has become more complex due to a greater range of risk drivers, many of which can be exacerbated by the observed and portended impacts of climate change. This chapter outlines the phenomena underlying the transition to urbanisation - and the security challenges that have been exacerbated by these transitions. In doing so this work a holistic approach to security and highlights a gradual trend in the increased securitisation of issues (such as climate change) that in the past were not considered part of typical ‘security’ dialogues. It also introduces a decision support framework that can aid a broad range of stakeholders in making decisions about the enhancement of security of urban spaces in a context of multiple threats exacerbated by these new security challenges