What do legacies entail? What secrets can they unravel on climate adaptation?

The ancient hydraulic city of Angkor was once a prosperous kingdom, built on water as a key natural resource, connected with Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake – Tonlé Sap. Research shows the demise of Angkor relates closely to climate change – a result of which saw the kingdom face decades-long drought followed by intense flooding in the final days. 

Studying the ironic demise of the kingdom gives us clues about how climate change can adversely impact livelihoods to a disastrous extent. It has the potential to destroy legacies and cause heritage and tradition to disappear along with it. 

The past of Angkor sheds light on climate adaptation and heritage preservation today as Angkor Wat faces imminent threats from changing monsoonal and rainfall patterns under the intensifying climate crisis. Present-day inhabitants of Angkor Wat must navigate the impact of climate change on their livelihood in order to secure a sustainable future. How can they go about doing this? Who is there to help? 

Climate mitigation has been widely discussed, but climate adaptation and resilience have been historically under-funded, even though they are just as crucial for a just transition towards a green economy. 

With intensifying extreme weather events, the most vulnerable communities urgently call for transformative adaptation plans. In order to succeed in addressing the needs of local communities, such plans must be based on the most updated scientific evidence. This explains why the COP27 Presidency launched the Adaptation Agenda to build climate resilience for four billion people by 2030. 

National Geographic Explorer, Dr Victoria Herrmann, set out to learn how climate change affected communities at a local scale. In field interviews with these local communities, she found that the loss of local culture and traditions, as well as weakened community bonding, repeatedly arose as concerns.This inspired her to start a meaningful project addressing the intersection of environmental and cultural preservation.

Fast forward to the present day, and we see Manulife, the global life insurance company and asset manager, has partnered with the National Geographic Society on a project entitled ‘Preserving Legacies: A Future for Our Past’ with Dr Victoria Herrmann as the lead explorer. The project sets out to safeguard world heritage sites from the impact of climate change. As a climate advocate in Asia, I had the precious opportunity to witness the launch of the partnership at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. 

‘Preserving Legacies’ upholds the grand vision of developing community-owned and community-led climate adaptation plans tailored to support local livelihoods and ensure long-term sustainability. Starting with local communities at heritage sites means engaging with site guardians who have valuable knowledge about managing and protecting sites. This can prevent ‘maladaptation’, as IPCC AR6 called out, to avoid a case where short-term impacts are reduced but existing inequalities for marginalised and vulnerable communities are reinforced in the longer term. On the other hand, ‘transformative adaptation’ seeks to address the root causes of vulnerability to climate change in the long-term through shifting systems away from unsustainable trajectories.

In the project, ten world heritage sites have been selected to cover a diverse range of climatic impacts – from changing monsoon patterns in Angkor Wat of Cambodia to flooding in Petra of Jordan. Researchers help to downscale regional climate models to cater to each of the heritage sites. Based on the model projections, climate literacy training will be held for the local site guardians, teaching them what extreme weather events to expect in the coming decades. In so doing, researchers lead them to brainstorm ways in which to leverage new and existing resources to adapt to these climate risks. 

Manulife proudly supports the project as it aligns with its Impact Agenda and overall goal to accelerate a sustainable future. Read more about their #ImpactAgenda here – https://www.manulife.com/en/about/sustainability/impact-agenda