Heritage as a dynamic force in building resilient communities

Irina Pavlova, UNESCO Project Officer, delves into how cultural and natural heritage can be harnessed as dynamic resources in building community resilience against the increasing threat of natural hazards in Europe and beyond through the RESILIAGE project.

Irina Pavlova has been working on the Community Resilience and Heritage Drivers (RESILIAGE) project since 2023. This Horizon Europe initiative, with UNESCO as a consortium partner, focuses on empowering communities across Europe to build resilience against natural hazards. In the past decade, Europe has experienced 1,205 disasters, affecting 15 million people. RESILIAGE collaborates with five communities across the continent, leveraging cultural heritage and natural resources to strengthen community resilience. In this interview, Irina Pavlova discusses the project's progress, upcoming milestones, and innovative methods for integrating cultural and natural elements into comprehensive disaster preparedness strategies.

Tell us about the RESILIAGE project, and what motivated you to become involved in it?

The RESILIAGE project is a three-year Horizon Europe initiative aimed at enhancing community resilience across Europe in the face of natural hazards. Since 2000, Europe has experienced over 1,200 disasters affecting approximately 15 million people. Our goal is to co-create resilient communities by developing digital tools and soft solutions, taking a holistic approach to mitigate the effects of natural hazards and climate change-related events.

As a UNESCO representative, I'm particularly excited about our role in this project. We're focusing on policy analysis and recommendations, enhancing community engagement, and fostering global knowledge sharing. For instance, we're creating comprehensive trainings to improve public involvement in disaster management and recognizing cultural heritage as a significant resilience asset.

What truly motivates me about RESILIAGE is its potential to transform how we view and utilize community resources in disaster preparedness. It's about empowering communities to leverage their unique cultural and natural heritage in building resilience. This project allows us to bridge the gap between traditional knowledge and modern disaster management techniques, creating more robust and adaptable communities across Europe and beyond.

The concept of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, deeply resonates with the philosophy behind RESILIAGE. Just as kintsugi highlights cracks to make an object more beautiful and resilient, RESILIAGE seeks to transform communities' vulnerabilities into strengths. This approach aligns perfectly with my background in environmental sciences and my growing interest in cultural heritage and community resilience.

Ultimately, this project allows me to contribute to creating communities that are not only resilient to immediate environmental threats but also enriched by their heritage. It's about fostering lasting, positive change that goes beyond mere risk reduction to true community empowerment.

What is community resilience?

Community resilience is the collective ability of a community to prepare for, withstand, and recover from adverse events. It's a multifaceted concept that encompasses preparedness, adaptability, recovery capacity, social cohesion, and efficient resource management. In the context of RESILIAGE, we view community resilience through the lens of heritage, recognizing both cultural and natural heritage as dynamic resources that can actively enhance a community's resilience.

Our project focuses on several key drivers of heritage-based resilience. These include adaptive governance, which involves diverse stakeholders in disaster risk management; health and wellbeing, addressing both physical and psychological aspects; active memory, which leverages collective historical knowledge; social interaction and inclusiveness, ensuring all community members are involved; and socio-economic resilience, exploring how heritage can contribute to economic recovery and diversification.

By integrating these heritage-driven aspects, RESILIAGE aims to create a more comprehensive, culturally rooted approach to community resilience. We're not just focusing on physical infrastructure or emergency response plans, but on the entire social, cultural, and economic fabric of a community. This innovative approach views heritage as a living, dynamic resource and emphasizes the importance of local knowledge and traditional practices in building resilience.

How do you define heritage?

Heritage, in my view, is a comprehensive concept that encompasses both cultural and natural elements. While cultural heritage -such as traditions, monuments, and arts- plays a crucial role, I'd like to emphasize natural heritage, which is equally significant. Natural heritage includes the physical, biological, and geological features of our environment that hold exceptional value. This could be landscapes like the Amazon rainforest, geological formations such as the Grand Canyon, or diverse ecosystems like coral reefs. It also includes individual species that are vital to their ecosystems and hold cultural or scientific importance.

But natural heritage is not just about untouched nature; it also reflects the long-standing interaction between humans and the natural environment. Indigenous knowledge, traditional land-use practices, and sustainable resource management developed over generations, are key parts of this legacy.

In the context of community resilience, natural heritage plays a vital role. It provides essential ecosystem services, supports livelihoods, contributes to economies through tourism, and often holds deep cultural and spiritual significance for communities. Understanding and preserving this heritage is crucial for sustainable development, climate change mitigation, and maintaining the delicate balance of our planet's ecosystems.

How does RESILIAGE build community resilience through heritage?

Heritage is a powerful tool for building community resilience, providing a sense of identity and continuity that's essential for navigating challenges. In RESILIAGE, we view both cultural and natural heritage as active components in resilience-building. Cultural heritage, with its embedded traditional knowledge, offers valuable insights for managing disaster risks and adapting to new challenges. For instance, tsunami stones in Japan and drought stones in Europe serve as historical reminders and protective measures against natural hazards.

Natural heritage plays a crucial role too. Biodiversity and ecosystems, like mangrove forests protecting coastlines from storm surges, act as natural defenses. By preserving these elements, communities can tap into generations of accumulated wisdom to better cope with various disruptions.

Our project builds on the understanding that heritage is not a static relic, but a living, evolving resource. We see it as a metaphorical tree: its roots represent generational knowledge, its trunk symbolizes community identity, and its branches showcase adaptability to new challenges. Just as a tree nurtures its ecosystem, heritage continues to grow, evolve, and support communities facing societal and environmental challenges.

Furthermore, heritage fosters social cohesion, strengthening bonds and enabling collective action during crises. Economically, heritage-based activities such as tourism and traditional crafts provide socioeconomic resilience, as demonstrated by the Famenne-Ardenne Global Geopark in Belgium. Through RESILIAGE, we're harnessing these multifaceted aspects of heritage to empower communities across Europe in building comprehensive resilience strategies.

What are the next steps for the RESILIAGE project?

RESILIAGE is entering an exciting phase. We're expanding our research to cover a broader range of communities in Europe and Latin America, exploring how various types of heritage contribute to resilience across diverse geographical and cultural contexts. A key focus is developing practical tools and methodologies that communities can use to assess and leverage their heritage for building resilience. For instance, in the Crete CORE Lab, we're implementing "active memory" as a form of intergenerational learning. This approach fosters collective memory as a cohesive element of community identity, reinforcing a sense of belonging that can be activated as a key driver of resilience throughout all phases of disaster risk management. By treating the past and culture as active resources, active memory enables communities to transcend disaster events, raising awareness and strengthening their capacity to respond and recover.

One exciting development is the creation of 'living laboratories'-communities where we can test and refine our heritage-based resilience strategies in real-world settings. This will provide valuable empirical evidence on how heritage can support resilience.

Moreover, we are committed to sharing our findings widely, not only within academic circles but also with policymakers, community leaders, and heritage professionals. We hope to influence policy at local, national, and international levels, ensuring that heritage is recognized as a vital resource in building resilient communities.

Ultimately, we see RESILIAGE as a catalyst for a paradigm shift. We aim to transform how communities view and use their heritage-not just as something to preserve, but as a powerful, dynamic force that can shape a resilient future.