Keeping History Above Water

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• How to identify potential private-public sector collaborators essential to engage the public and address climate-change planning in your community
• Strategies for planning and implementation of climate-change adaptation in your community
• How to leverage limited funding and staff resources to begin the process of climate-change adaptation planning for heritage sites in your community

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Keeping History Above Water (KHAW) is a global public-engagement platform for connecting cultural heritage sites, climate change experts, and heritage professionals to create solutions for climate impacts on historic communities. This partnership, begun by the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF), has expanded into an international collaboration facilitated by the United States Chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS). In 2017 the City of Annapolis joined the collaboration as host of the 2017 KHAW conference. Nonprofit and government collaboration through the US/ICOMOS Climate Change and Heritage Knowledge Exchange (KE:CC) demonstrates how a local nonprofit, a government planning office, and an international non-governmental organization can facilitate an international dialogue to plan for a future of rising waters. This session will show how to connect cultural heritage, design, planning, and public policy professionals through both traditional (conferences and websites) and non-traditional (social media) engagement tools while breaking down cost and time barriers to international exchange, harnessing new technologies, and leveraging face-to-face exchange programs. KE:CC makes knowledge of adaptation practices from abroad available to preservationists in the United States, while at the same time providing a platform for these practitioners to contribute their work to the international effort to adapt to climate change.