1 A Guide to Climate Change
The importance of recognising climate change and its impacts has never been clearer. The Scottish Government declared a climate emergency in April 2019 and committed to a green recovery from COVID-19 in December 2020, both highlighting the need to assess the impacts of climate change on the historic environment.
A Guide to Climate Change Impacts on Scotland’s Historic Environment is a commitment of the Our Place in Time (OPiT) Climate Change Working Group and is the product of a collaborative sector approach.
As lead of this working group, we brought together sector partners to launch the guide at Glasgow City Chambers in October 2019.
The guide is the product of extensive research and looks at climate change impacts on all aspects of the historic environment, including the climate hazards they face, their vulnerability, and potential adaptation measures that can be applied.
It identifies seven elements outlining the features that can increase the resilience or vulnerability of a historic site:
- roofed buildings and infrastructure
- gardens and designed landscapes
- marine
- coastal
- surface remains
- buried remains
- collections and internal fabrics
The guide places Scotland’s historic environment at the heart of climate action, and aims to promote cooperation across all sectors of society.
Our Place in Time was Scotland’s strategy for the historic environment, developed collaboratively by organisations and specialists in the historic environment sector and beyond. In June 2023, we updated this national strategy and released Our Past, Our Future.
Find out more about this new strategy for Scotland's historic environment.
2 Adapt Northern Heritage
Adapt Northern Heritage was a collaborative research project supporting communities and local authorities in the North Atlantic region to adapt their cultural heritage to the environmental impacts of climate change and its associated hazards.
This was achieved through community engagement and informed conservation planning. We were one of four project partners, along with the following organisations:
- Minjastofnun Íslands (the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland)
- Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research)
- Riksantikvaren (Norway's Directorate for Cultural Heritage)
The project had identified the following objectives:
Objective 1 - Assessment tool and adaptation guidance
Develop procedures for risks and vulnerabilities assessments and sustainable adaptation planning of historic places and make the procedures accessible online.
Objective 2 Demonstration case studies
Produce adaptation action plans to demonstrate how the environmental impacts of climate change and associated natural hazards can be integrated into conservation planning.
Objective 3 Community network
Create a network for stakeholders concerned with the conservation of northern cultural heritage in the context of a changing climate to contribute, engage, learn and network.
The project developed a tool to assess the risks for and vulnerabilities of historic places and provide guidance for the planning of strategic adaption measures that takes into account cultural, economic, environmental and social sustainability.
The tool was developed, tested and demonstrated in nine case studies, in Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Scotland, for which adaptation actions plans will be produced. The project has also created a community network with a networking platform, round table workshops and training events.
Adapt Northern Heritage Conference
This conference took place online from 5 to 6 May 2020 and explored, in parallel sessions through peer-reviewed presentations, the practices and research concerned with:
- assessing the environmental impacts of climate change on, and associated risks to, historic places
- planning and/or implementing adaptation measures to make historic places more resilient to, or manage their loss because of, climate change
The conference abstracts are freely available online, as part of the project’s toolkit, and the presentations can be viewed as recorded Facebook Livestreams.
3 Climate Action Plan
In April 2019 the Scottish Government declared a climate emergency, highlighting that transformational change is needed to address climate breakdown.
Our Climate Action Plan (CAP) sets out how we are planning to transform the ways in which we operate, responding to the climate emergency that is growing ever more urgent.
Research will be central to this – from helping us to understand how historic buildings can be made more energy efficient, to helping us understand how traditional, low-carbon building materials and techniques for using them can help us to reduce our emissions.
The ambitious plan proposes over 60 actions across seven key themes that span the operations and responsibilities of Historic Environment Scotland:
- Energy and carbon management
- Climate impacts and adaptation
- Biodiversity and landscape
- Sustainable travel
- Circular economy
- Sustainable tourism
- Sustainable procurement
The planned actions are detailed through four strands – Innovation; Partnerships; People and Training.
Our plan also sets out how we will support others responding to the climate emergency, through knowledge sharing, increasing resilience and making sustainable investments.
Find out more by reading our Climate Action Plan (CAP) or by watching our video detailing what the climate crisis means for Scotland's heritage. For further information, please contact climate.change@hes.scot.
4 Climate Change Research – Visitor Travel Emissions
As a ‘Major Player’ under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, HES has a duty to act as an exemplar and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to act sustainably. This leading role is further established in the recently launched national strategy for the historic environment, Our Past, Our Future, which outlines the sector’s commitment to reduce emissions in the historic environment, including those of tourism.
HES, as the lead public body for the historic environment and the largest operator of paid-for visitor attractions in Scotland, has recently launched its Responsible Tourism Framework, which outlines aspirations on enabling and promoting low carbon visitor experiences, which includes visitor travel.
HES has a dispersed portfolio with a mixture of paid entry and free entry sites, often in rural locations with poor public and active transport links. Nonetheless, the organisation is working towards encouraging responsible tourism, engaging with communities around sites on creating opportunities related to visitor markets, and enabling visitors to access heritage in the most sustainable way.
The long-term vision is to create a joined up and consistent approach to understanding visitor travel emissions, in order to support responsible tourism.
HES is engaging a consultant to increase the organisation’s understanding of visitor travel emissions. Findings will contribute towards a better understanding of the organisation’s visitor travel emissions, as well as a methodology for monitoring and measuring visitor travel emissions to prioritise actions to reduce HES’s organisational emissions.
The final report, which is to include recommendations on ‘next steps’ covering opportunities for future research, analysis and improvement, is due at the end of March 2024.