Landscape Futures and the Challenge of Change: Towards Integrated Cultural/Natural Heritage Decision Making

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In coming decades, the need to adapt to and mitigate accelerated environmental change will require heritage and landscape managers to make difficult decisions about how to manage assets and allocate resources. The assertion that heritage assets are irreplaceable and that heritage is a 'non-renewable resource' has underpinned a commitment by the heritage sector to protect assets from cultural and biophysical processes that may cause damage or loss of historic fabric. UK and international heritage stakeholders now appreciate that, in some contexts, promises of continued protection may be unsustainable. The sector is beginning to consider how to respond when change is inevitable, or when conservation at current levels is not feasible. New strategies are required for sensitive, proactive management of heritage transformations, particularly in vulnerable coastal landscapes and for assets already in an advanced state of decline. The Landscape Futures and the Challenge of Change project (LFCC) responds directly to the challenge that accelerated climate change poses for the natural and cultural heritage sector. It draws on the AHRC-funded Heritage Futures research programme's innovative approaches to cross-sectoral knowledge exchange, and on programme findings which identified barriers to the effective management of change. Heritage Futures research also found, however, that shifting attention from the 'loss' of discrete heritage assets to focus on their broader landscape context may be a way to encourage more creative and confident decision making. Emphasis on the risk posed to an individual asset or feature can block the ability to see patterns of change in a wider context, and in wider temporal scales. A landscape approach, which understands cultural heritage assets as part of continually changing ecological and geophysical systems, has a key part to play in supporting a transition to more integrated and adaptive management of heritage and land assets. The project aims to apply these findings and approaches to the development of a new decision support framework for cultural and natural heritage conservation management planning in the UK. Working collaboratively with the National Trust, Historic England and Natural England (and in consultation with a wider network of practitioners) the framework will deliver three key outcomes for landscape and heritage managers: (1) consistency in interpretation of relevant regulations and guidance, (2) confidence in making the decision to manage for change, and (3) capability in devolving decision making to local managers and inspectors. The project will develop and disseminate a new model for heritage decision making and resource the UK heritage sector to engage with long term thinking and respond to challenges more effectively and creatively. In doing so, it will show how the research undertaken as part of the Heritage Futures research programme is directly applicable to a specific set of practical problems for the sector. The project will have wide reaching significance for natural and cultural heritage research, policy-making and practice in the UK and internationally, by developing an approach that supports decision making for thriving cultural-ecological landscapes, where human and natural histories are understood as conjoined and complementary.