Cultural Heritage Protection in the Age of Climate Change: Assessing Adequacy and Interpretative Limits of the World Heritage Convention

Abstract

Climate change has become a general threat to humanity, and the potentially devastating nature of its consequences is demonstrated by the fact that some States have begun to submerge as a result of rising sea levels, forcing their populations to migrate to other countries. In the face of such dramatic developments, the protection of cultural heritage has appeared not to be a priority.

In the field of international legal regulation, two distinct normative regimes have traditionally existed: on the one hand, a body of rules governing the protection of cultural heritage, foremost among them the 1972 World Heritage Convention; on the other, a regime addressing climate change, centred on the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These two bodies of law operated separately, each within its own regulatory sphere, with little to no overlap between them.

This situation has begun to change in recent years with the adoption of various soft law instruments addressing the impact of climate change on cultural heritage and proposing measures to respond to this challenge. In addition, the question of the interdependence between cultural heritage treaties and climate change agreements has come to the fore. The rules on the interpretation of international treaties, as set out in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, point towards a contextual interpretation of the World Heritage Convention, under which other treaties, including those relating to climate change, must also be taken into account. Such an interpretative approach raises important legal questions, such as the scope of states’ obligations under the World Heritage Convention and their relationship to climate change commitments. The paper concludes that climate change informs the interpretation of the World Heritage Convention, but does not alter the scope of states’ legal obligations under it. Rather, it supports the adoption of site-specific measures aimed at protecting heritage properties from climate-induced harm.