Sarah Baker

Utilising the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 Statement, this article examines 51 UNESCO state of conservation reports from 1979–2021 to explore the impacts of climate change hazards on UNESCO World Heritage-listed cultural properties in the Asia–Pacific region. This article provides a list of the cultural properties impacted by climate change hazards, the types of hazards experienced and their resulting impacts, the kind of conservation responses, challenges to the implementation of the suggested actions, and recommendations for future safeguarding against climate change threats. The article highlights that a negligible number of cultural properties affected by climate change hazards have been monitored and managed by UNESCO, with a much larger proportion of cultural properties facing conservation challenges related to climate change currently going unnoticed by the State of Conservation Information System. Specifically, the review of the state of conservation reports illustrates a very real challenge for understanding climate threats impacting the cultural properties of the Pacific States Parties. While this article confirms the value of the State of Conservation Information System, it also demonstrates that weaknesses remain in its capacity to deliver systematic climate impact analysis.

Underpinned by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 Statement, this systematic review analyses 58 peer-reviewed articles published during 2008–2021 and retrieved from Scopus and Google Scholar that address the relationship between climate change and UNESCO World Heritage-listed cultural properties. The review reveals a suite of observations that will be important to consider for future research, including: the significant increase in publications since 2008; the prevalence of scholarship focused on the region of Europe and North America; the diversity of research methods and approaches; the instances of climate change hazards; the numerous adaptation measures and barriers. The study also showcases a much greater scholarly concentration on natural sites compared to cultural sites, observing that a reliance on a nature/culture binary does not bode well for the effective safeguarding of cultural World Heritage sites. This article also highlights the need for greater representation from the Global South in terms of both geographic focus and authorship, the lack of collaboration between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) disciplines, the capacity for collective action from different stakeholders, the importance of intangible elements, and the effects of both international and national legal frameworks and regulations.