Cultural heritage in disasters

Abstract

Do communities directly impacted by large-scale natural hazard events or violent conflicts have a role in rescuing and recovering their heritage? The ‘Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage’ states that the ‘decisions on recovery and reconstruction should follow people-centred approaches and fully engage local communities and, where appropriate, indigenous peoples, as well as other relevant stakeholders’. Yet in practice, engaging communities to protect cultural heritage during and following a crisis remains challenging. Based on the author’s own experience of providing first aid to cultural heritage in crisis situations, this chapter describes key challenges involved in developing people-centred approaches for rescuing heritage and building resilience against future crises. The author concludes that international and national heritage institutions have not been able to translate policy into practice. Official responses in crises continue to be top-down. They fail to recognise the vital contribution and potential benefit of local communities and the traditional knowledge held by them. Other factors contributing to the marginalisation of local communities include a lack of coordination between agencies and a failure to incorporate cultural heritage into disaster risk management plans.