This eBook explores how the Urban Heritage Climate Observatory (UHCO) is safeguarding the future of our planet’s most beautiful and historic locations, protecting World Heritage properties from the effects of climate change through Earth Observation.
The devastating impacts of climate change have already arrived at our shores, with sea levels rising, global temperatures soaring to new records, and extreme weather events paralysing civilisations all across the globe. Without immediate and effective climate action, our planet’s current course has only one destination: unfathomably catastrophic effects on human and environmental health. Some of the most vulnerable areas to climate change are our World Heritage properties, which the UHCO is endeavouring to defend.
Climate change threatens cultural and natural World Heritage through exponentially growing exposure to slow-onset climatic processes, including desertification, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events such as floods, storms, droughts, wildfires, and temperature extremes. These processes and events jeopardise the preservation and existence of World Heritage sites and their built structures, impacting local communities, tourism, and other socio-economic activities.
Perhaps the most promising strategy to mitigate the effects of climate change and protect World Heritage properties is through Earth observation. For example, Earth observation data can be utilised in World Heritage Cities to bridge the gap between climate change and cultural heritage communities. Additionally, Earth observation provides a framework for developing multi-disciplinary and multigovernmental approaches to combat climate change risks and impacts on cultural heritage.
UHCO’s eBook, written in partnership with the Innovation News Network, outlines how the organisation is championing the use of Earth Observation technologies and processes to ensure the future of World Heritage Cities and properties globally.
About UHCO
UHCO is a Group on Earth Observations (GEO) pilot initiative led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Heritage Centre (WHC), and the Greek GEO Office (GGO).
UHCO is aiming to:
- Provide a forum for relevant partners to share good practices, needs and expertise;
- Match user needs to Earth observation assets to enrich and coordinate processes for the preservation, monitoring, and management of urban heritage, as well as communication and advocacy around local, national, and international climate action; and
- Enable a modernisation of practices through coproducing targeted Earth observation-driven tools and services focusing on climate change risks and impacts on urban heritage.
UHCO functions as a consortium, amalgamating leading experts and stakeholders in the fields of cultural heritage, climate change and Earth observation to optimise processes to preserve, monitor, and manage World Heritage properties.
