When the Past Disappears: Saving Our Cultural Heritage From Climate Change

Imagine a child standing before the ruins of a centuries old monument, asking their grandparent what happened there. Perhaps it was a place of refuge during a war, a building where generations gathered, or a street where a community built its life. The grandparent begins to tell the story. But what happens when the building is gone, the records are damaged, and the people who remember are no longer there to tell it?

Humanity has always relied on storytelling to carry its past into the future. We inherit history through photographs, family memories, monuments, handwritten records and the places where extraordinary and ordinary lives unfolded. Now, climate change threatens more than these physical reminders. Through floods, rising seas, extreme heat and wildfires, it threatens the evidence through which future generations will understand who we were.

And like so many things we take for granted, we may only recognise the value of what we have lost when it is too late to recover it.

When Places Hold Our Stories

A historic building is never just a building. It is a witness. Its walls may have seen a nation change, a family grow, a community survive or a tradition pass from one generation to the next. Its significance lies not only in its age or architecture, but in the stories that give it meaning.

When climate related damage destroys a historic site, the loss can reach beyond bricks, stone and timber. Floodwater can damage archives and collections. Coastal erosion can swallow archaeological evidence. Heat, storms and changing rainfall can accelerate the deterioration of vulnerable structures.

The UK Climate Change Committee’s 2026 assessment recognises cultural heritage as a distinct area of climate risk, warning that flooding, coastal erosion and storms threaten historic buildings, collections, landscapes and archaeological sites. Without adaptation, some heritage may suffer irreversible damage or complete loss.

This is not a distant possibility that concerns only historians or conservation experts. It concerns every generation that deserves the chance to understand its past. Imagine learning about a community's courage through a place that no longer exists, or trying to explain a tradition to a child when the objects and spaces that gave it meaning have disappeared. A story may survive in words, but something irreplaceable is lost when the evidence that grounded it vanishes.

A Global Crisis, Experienced One Place at a Time

In Hoi An, Vietnam, climate change is not an abstract warning. The UNESCO World Heritage town, known for its historic streets and centuries of cultural exchange, faces recurrent flooding and extreme weather. UNESCO reports that floods in October and November 2025 exceeded historical records, submerged large parts of the town and accelerated deterioration in vulnerable heritage structures. Most of the 1,155 inspected heritage sites remained structurally intact, but dozens showed varying degrees of degradation.

Behind these figures are buildings that hold the memory of generations, and residents whose lives and livelihoods are bound to the town. Every recovery effort must consider not only what needs repairing today, but what repeated flooding could mean for the town's identity tomorrow. If its historic character gradually disappears, future visitors may still arrive, but they will encounter a diminished connection to the past that made Hoi An distinctive.

The same concern reaches Venice, Italy, one of the world’s most recognisable historic cities. Its relationship with water is central to its identity, yet rising sea levels and damaging high-water events threaten buildings, artworks and the wider lagoon landscape. UNESCO identifies exceptional high water as a threat to Venice and notes that repeated flooding contributes to deterioration of buildings and urban areas. India’s submerged city of Dwarka offers a powerful parallel, reminding us how the loss of places beneath the water can leave generations searching for the history they once held.

Hoi An and Venice differ in history, geography and resources. Their shared lesson is that climate risk becomes cultural loss when the response comes too late. Protecting heritage therefore requires long-term maintenance, scientific evidence, local planning and the knowledge of the people who live with these places. There is no single solution for every community.

From Remembering the Past to Protecting the Future

There is reason to believe this loss is not inevitable. On 29 September 2026, the European Partnership for Resilient Cultural Heritage was launched in Marseille, bringing together 90 partners from 30 countries with a total budget of €215 million, including €65 million from Horizon Europe. Over the next ten years, it aims to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage against climate and environmental change.

More importantly, the partnership is beginning to define how this protection will happen in practice. Its first joint transnational research call, scheduled for 26 November 2026 and involving 28 funders, will focus on assessing climate risks to heritage, preparing for and managing damage and loss, and examining how traditional, local and Indigenous knowledge can strengthen society’s resilience. It will also address how cultural heritage can be governed and protected more sustainably. The wider programme includes interdisciplinary research, training, knowledge exchange, and long term monitoring to help turn research into practical action.

Consider what this could mean for a child growing up in Hoi An, Vietnam, where record breaking floods in late 2025 accelerated the deterioration of vulnerable historic structures. Thirty years from now, that child might walk through the town’s old streets and ask why a particular house matters, who lived there and what its walls have witnessed. The answer should not have to begin with an apology that the building was lost, its details forgotten or its history reduced to a photograph. Research, preparation and timely protection cannot guarantee that every structure will survive, but they can give more places a chance to carry their stories forward.

The success of this work will ultimately be measured in more than the number of studies completed or the amount of funding invested. It will be measured in the histories that remain accessible, the communities that retain their connections to the past and the generations who can still encounter the places through which those histories live.

The Stories We Choose to Leave Behind

Climate change is often discussed through rising temperatures, economic costs and environmental damage. These are urgent realities. But there is another question we must ask: what happens to our collective memory when the places that hold it become impossible to preserve?

We cannot protect every historic structure from every threat. We can, however, stop treating cultural heritage as an afterthought, something to mourn once the damage is done. Protecting it means recognising that the past belongs not only to those who lived it, but also to those who have yet to discover it.

Our responsibility is not simply to leave future generations stories about the world we inherited. It is to leave them enough of that world to experience, question and understand those stories for themselves. Preservation, at its heart, is an act of responsibility to people we will never meet: ensuring that when future generations go looking for their past, they find more than the stories we told them. They find the traces of the lives that made those stories worth telling.

References:

A Well-Adapted UK - Climate Change Committee. (2026, May 19). Climate Change Committee. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/a-well-adapted-uk/

Cultural Heritage – A Driver of Climate Action for Resilient World. (2026, February 18). Unesco.Org. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/cultural-heritage-driver-climate-action-resilient-world-heritage-cities-towns-asia-and-pacific

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (2026). Venice and its Lagoon. Unesco.Org. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/394/

Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. (2026, September 29). EU launches €215 million Partnership to protect cultural heritage against climate change. Research and Innovation. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/eu-launches-eur215-million-partnership-protect-cultural-heritage-against-climate-change-2026-09-29_en

ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation. (2021). ERA Portal Austria – European Partnership for Resilient Cultural Heritage launches first call. Era.Gv.At. https://www.era.gv.at/news-items/european-partnership-for-resilient-cultural-heritage-launches-first-call/