This Call is jointly organised between the Joint Programming Initiatives Cultural Heritage and Global Change (JPI CH) and Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe (JPI Climate) and the Belmont Forum. The Call aims to support transdisciplinary and convergent research approaches on cultural heritage and climate change, to foster collaboration among the research community across several regions, and to contribute to knowledge advances and policy change at the global level.
Interested and eligible applicants are expected to submit the research proposal on Belmont Forum Grant Operations (BFgo) website. Please carefully review the call documents on the platform when preparing a proposal.
Climate change is having an increasing and lasting impact on our environment and society. This is the context within which cultural heritage - tangible and intangible - is threatened by well-known, new and more extreme risks. Researchers have already been investigating the impacts of climate change on the environment, on social systems and on the economy, however, as cultural heritage becomes more vulnerable, there is still much to be done to complement existing findings, engage societies in heritage discussions, and improve the degree of resilience, in order to inform the development of robust prevention and adaptation policies and strategies.
Yet, while cultural heritage is acknowledged as being more urgently challenged by climate change, global agreements, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also acknowledge the potential of cultural heritage to play an active role in the transition towards a more sustainable and resilient future. It is vital that research further explores how to make cultural heritage a readily available resource for climate mitigation, adaptation and for sustainable development.
The call will address three complimentary themes:
The 16 proposals recommended for funding, in alphabetical order, are:
| Acronym | Full Name | Countries |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptation Traditions and Climate Change | Biocultural adaptation of resource management traditions under the effects of climate change | CH, US, UK |
| AGREE | Advancing Cultural Heritage Governance for Resilient Climate Adaptation | IT, NO, UK |
| ARCA | Biocultural Heritage in Arctic Cities: Resource for Climate Adaptation? | AT, FR, NO, US |
| ATLAS | Studying symbiotic scenarios linking Heritage assets and green areas to prepare Historic Cities to face Climate Changes | FR, IT, ES |
| Coastal TALES | Telling Adaptations; Living Environmental Stories for Coastal Resilience | IE, US, UK |
| CuHeMo | Cultural Heritage in Motion: Indigenous Knowledge and Mobile Livelihoods in Changing Climates | AT, NL, TH |
| FIRECULT | Wildfire Resilient Cultural Heritage | IE, IT, TR, US, UK |
| Pasture Adaptation | Mitigation and Adaptation in Cultural Heritage Landscapes: Lessons from Transhumant Pastoral Systems for Managing Novel Climate Risks | FR, NO, ES, CH, US |
| REFRESH | WateR cyclE For RESilient Heritage | BE, FR, IT, UK |
| RETRACE | ResilienceS to climate risks: lessons from arctic and pacific communities | FR, NO, US |
| ReVerDi | Real Versus Digital: Sustainability optimization for cultural heritage preservation in national libraries | NL, CH, UK |
| SASCHA | Multiscale approaches and scalability within climate change--heritage risk assessments | IT, NO, US, UK |
| SCENTinel | Climate Changes and Scent Heritage: The Urgent Need for Capturing and Preserving Olfactory Landscapes in a Changing World | CZ, IT, NO |
| SEA-CCHange | Socio-Ecological Archiving: Coastal Communities' Heritage in times of climate change | IE, NL, UK |
| SUSTHERIT | Transformative urban heritage. Strategies for a sustainable European historic housing stock. | AT, CZ, FR, UK |
| WRENCH | Whispers of Time: Heritage as Narratives of Climate-Change | IT, ES, TR, UK |
