DUNAS Principle Investigator, Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo, presented on the DUNAS collaborative project during the Smithsonian’s Stemming the Tide symposium and her piece entitled, “Climate Change and Archaeological Sites: A Case Study for Partnering Cultural Heritage and Climate Action” has now been published and is available to view and download.
Climate change has become one of the most significant and fastest growing threats to cultural heritage around the globe. Yet cultural heritage sites and collections also serve as invaluable sources of resilience for communities to address climate change. In March 2020, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Collections Program convened the symposium “Stemming the Tide: Global Strategies for Sustaining Cultural Heritage through Climate Change” to empower cultural heritage authorities, managers, and advocates to pursue more ambitious engagement and collaborative approaches to climate change. Speakers explored six categories of cultural heritage identified by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS): Cultural Landscapes and Historic Urban Landscapes, Archaeological Sites, Built Heritage (Buildings and Structures), Cultural Communities, Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Museums and Collections.
DUNAS Principle Investigator, Dr. Isabel Rivera-Collazo, presented on our collaborative project during this symposium and her piece entitled, “Climate Change and Archaeological Sites: A Case Study for Partnering Cultural Heritage and Climate Action” has now been published by the Smithsonian and is available to view and download here.
Dr. Rivera-Collazo summarizes, “The current trend of climate change is a crisis because it threatens the fabric of society. The social sciences are needed to understand and mitigate those impacts...the Descendants United for Nature, Adaptation, and Sustainability (DUNAS) project (is) an example of a partnership between communities and researchers to mitigate climate impacts and protect cultural heritage in Puerto Rico.”
To learn more about the DUNAS project please visit, https://www.climatesciencealliance.org/dunas
Leer en español: https://www.climatesciencealliance.org/dunas-espanol
This project is made possible through a 2018 Climate Adaptation Fund grant from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) entitled, “Puerto Rico se Levanta: Learning from extreme events to build and sustain a resilient future". Support to establish the Climate Adaptation Fund was provided by a grant to the WCS from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.