Mapping traditional and local knowledge to foster climate change adaptation : the case of cultural heritage in small islands

Abstract

This chapter shares the research and methodologies of the Heritage Ecologies project, based at the Islands and Small States Institute (ISSI) of the University of Malta and funded by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action programme (grant agreement No. 101090288). Fully titled “Heritage Ecologies: Culture, resilience and development in island states,” this project investigates how cultural heritages are impacted by climate change and the role played by heritage and local knowledge in promoting climate change adaptation and sustaining social and environmental resiliencies, focusing on insular geographies.

By adopting the term “ecologies,” we aim to highlight the relational aspects connecting cultural heritage, in its multiple expressions and materialities, environmental histories, and sustainable futures. Curiously, the concept of heritage ecologies is equally used, although with a different focus, in the title of the book edited by Bangstad and Pétursdóttir. Here the authors use the concept to express “an ecological understanding of heritage” and it involves “human and other-than-human actors” (Bangstad & Þóra Pétursdóttir, 2021). For our research, the interconnections, and interdependence, between culture and environment are central. [excerpt]