Accelerated Climate Change and Australia's Cultural Heritage

Abstract

In the early 1990's, cultural heritage places were identified as likely to be impacted by accelerated (greenhouse) climate change. Subsequently, both at the national and international levels, cultural heritage issues have not been mentioned in agendas requiring adaptive responses. In this paper it is argued that adaptive responses, which include cultural heritage issues, need to be developed. Numerous sites could potentially be impacted by accelerated climate change, particularly in coastal locations. These sites range from indigenous middens, to early European coastal engineering structures. Coastal middens in particular, apart from their obvious value to indigenous owners and archaeologists, are a vast store of palaeo-climate, sea level and biological systems information. They also have ecotourism values. Environmental managers need to be made aware of these broad heritage values, and cultural heritage managers need to assess their professional capabilities to deal with conservation and salvage issues if environmental change is rapid. There is a critical need to make indigenous owners aware of these issues and involve them at all levels of the debate.