Using Impact Chains for Co-creating Cause-Effect Models of Climatic and Anthropogenic Hazards in Cultural Landscapes

Cultural landscapes represent the intersection of natural and cultural heritage, encompassing the physical environment as well as the cultural practices, traditions, and values associated with a specific place. These landscapes often have important socioeconomic and community dimensions, serving as centers of livelihoods, tourism, and community identity. Moreover, these landscapes have intrinsic value and contribute to the overall diversity and richness of our global heritage. They hold stories, knowledge, and traditions that connect us to our past and shape our collective identity.

Climatic and anthropogenic hazards pose significant risks to these landscapes, including the degradation or loss of cultural heritage sites, changes in traditional land-use practices, and the erosion of cultural identities and knowledge systems.

To understand and evaluate these potential impacts, helping to safeguard and preserve the cultural significance and integrity of these landscapes, it is necessary to identify the specific risks and vulnerabilities that cultural landscapes face, allowing for the development of targeted adaptation strategies, enabling proactive measures to mitigate the impacts and ensure the resilience and continuity of these landscapes for future generations.

One widely adopted tool for risk assessments are Impact Chains [1], i.e., cause-effect models that describe the relationship between a hazard (e.g., a storm surge, a heatwave), exposed elements (e.g., residents, birdlife, agricultural practices) and their vulnerability (e.g., dike maintenance practices), and resulting impacts (e.g., coastal erosion). Impact Chains are composed of all these elements and additionally, intermediate impacts, i.e., cascading effects related to hazard and vulnerability elements. Impact Chains are typically developed through participative processes that involve local stakeholders. These stakeholders provide valuable input and feedback for the development of the Impact Chain. The validated Impact Chain provides a structured representation of the cause-effect relationships associated with the investigated risk.

Until now, Impact Chains have mainly been used as a basis for indicator-based Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments from the national to the local level, but not for modelling anthropogenic hazards like over-tourism or the abandonment of agricultural practices. In addition, only few Impact Chains for cultural sites have been developed.

In this contribution, we present Impact Chains that have been developed for five cultural landscapes as part of the Horizon Europe project RescueME (GA No. 101094978) and cover both climatic as well as anthropogenic hazards. These Impact Chains have been developed within case studies of the island of Neuwerk in the Waddensea of Hamburg (Germany), the Huerta and Albufera de Valencia (Spain), the Defensive System of the City of Zadar (Croatia), the region of Portovenere, Cinque Terre and the Islands (Italy), and the UNESCO Geopark in Crete (Greece). This contribution will describe the co-creation process for Impact Chain development, the involved stakeholder types, as well as the adaptations made to the standard Impact Chain representations [1].

 

References

[1] GIZ (2016). The Vulnerability Sourcebook. https://www.adaptationcommunity.net/download/va/vulnerability-guides-manuals-reports/vuln_source_2017_EN.pdf.