Abstract
In a world of increasing and worse and worse climate events, there is an urgent need to find how to manage the climate change risk and make cultural heritage more resilient. Given the relevant threat represented by climate-related events, this paper aims to analyze the role of insurance in safeguarding cultural heritage from natural disasters. The focus is on Italian Churches seen as a particular case of study. Taking into consideration the characteristics of the managing risk strategy, we use a value-belief-norm approach and a decision tree analysis to evaluate the efficiency of the governance scheme adopted. In the case examined of the Italian Churches, the strategy is mainly based on a private insurance contract characterized by a double track, local and national, to reach the important goal of the full coverage of all churches. We conclude that cultural heritage can drive climate action and the originality of the Italian Churches strategy can represent a benchmark in this field.
Highlights
In recent decades, climate-related risks have increased as a result of changes in climate, as well as rapid and unplanned urbanization, population growth and environmental degradation (Poljanšek et al 2017)
Evaluation, monitoring and safeguarding cultural heritage are relevant tasks for the implementation of an appropriate strategy to cope with climate-related events, in the direction to reduce the impact of natural disasters
Looking at the Italian Churches case of study, it seems that this theory can be applied, since the risk management choice made by the CEI starts from the awareness of certain important values
Summary
Climate-related risks have increased as a result of changes in climate, as well as rapid and unplanned urbanization, population growth and environmental degradation (Poljanšek et al 2017). The concept of resilience must not be limited to the capability of coping with disasters, the so-called instantaneous resilience, but instead needs to be extended to the ability to reconstruct and recover quickly or, in other words, become “dynamic resilience” (Hallegatte 2014) Considering this last definition, the Sendai Framework encourages the use of financial instruments that can reduce the potential harm of weather-related events (Mysiak et al 2016). Evaluation, monitoring and safeguarding cultural heritage are relevant tasks for the implementation of an appropriate strategy to cope with climate-related events, in the direction to reduce the impact of natural disasters. A strategy for dealing with these events resulting from climate change should be adopted and successfully performed to protect the outstanding values of cultural heritage In this perspective, insurance can be a useful tool to adopt for better managing such risks. Some conclusive remarks outline the Italian Churches choice as a risk managing system for cultural heritage that may be extended in other scenarios
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