Historic Environment and Climate Change Workshop

During the workshop, delegates looked at scoping the range of climate change impacts on the historic environment. The matrix of impacts had been developed to include detailed comments and contributions from participants.

• Joint regional priorities for leadership on climate change and the historic environment - based on the workshop findings - were provisionally agreed by the East Midlands Heritage Forum:
• Access for owners, their agents and contractors to advice and guidance on the management of historic assets in new climatic conditions
• A robust, shared and simple methodology for the assessment and registering of risk to heritage assets from new climatic conditions, and from proposals for adaptation and mitigation
• Guidance for policy makers to ensure regional and local plans address vulnerabilities and opportunities of the historic environment [eg on NI188, the wealth of case studies from the workshop, and on issues to be addressed in a further workshop]
• Making a clear case, widely accepted, for the positive contribution that utilizing and reusing historic assets can make in adapting to climate change and reducing carbon emissions

A summary report of the event and next steps will be published during the autumn.

Further information is available from http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conservation/climate/workshop

PowerPoint presentations from the workshop are available for download:

• Historic environment impacts: what are the emerging risks to heritage assets? Ken Smith, Peak District National Park Authority (PDF | 2.86MB)
• Climate change projections for the UK: an introduction to UKCP09 Laurie Newton, UKCIP (PDF | 2.58MB)
• Climate change adaptation policy: its implementation in the East Midlands and opportunities for the historic environment Mike Peverill, Regional climate change coordinator, Climate East Midlands (Regional Climate Change Partnership)(PDF | 926KB)