4 C O N T E X T 1 7 1 : M A R C H 2 0 2 2 How ‘Conserving our Places Conserves our Planet’ A summary of the IHBC’s key messages to COP26 (from ‘Some observations on moving forward after COP26’) Sustainable Historic buildings and places, including historic gardens and landscapes, constitute non-renewable resources. Their conservation is a key component of our sustainable future. Care Conserving buildings and structures (which includes their care and maintenance) controls the carbon already captured in their construction and minimises the climate-unfriendly waste of demolition and landfill. Repair Repairing, caring for and adapting existing buildings encourages lowcarbon traditional construction practices, skills and materials, reducing the need for carbonheavy concrete, steel and new-build materials and their associated transport and production impacts. Adaptation Adapting existing structures to suitable new uses typically is the best way to offer low-carbon, climate-friendly and environmentally sensitive new facilities and places, as many construction awards testify. Nature As with caring for gardens and landscapes, traditional design and materials – from eaves overhanging walls that encourage nesting birds to earth construction – support the natural environment and encourage biodiversity. Community Historic and traditional places are inherently sustainable, being designed to facilitate pedestrian and other low-carbon traffic, all of which also brings health, well-being, social and community benefits. See the full text at https://tinyurl.com/mpnxvu5c via a recording – and the highlight from the IHBC, our own suite of Climate and Conservation podcasts. That success was not a surprise. We knew that the virtual platform could successfully and costeffectively offer the Helpdesk+ service because of the lessons from the IHBC’s learning-led MarketPlace platform, developed for the 2021 Brighton school and also now under way for Aberdeen in 2022. Even the MarketPlace guidance could be adapted as guidance for ‘feature’ hosts on the service, such as our Scotland branch chair MarkWatson, and volunteer hosts, notably the stellar Stella Südekum, who bravely responded to the NewsBlog call for volunteers to help host the Helpdesk, joining our chair, David McDonald, as the mainstay of our volunteering officers over the COP fortnight. As the IHBC never was among in the elite ‘zonal’ network at the COP, our access to the public outside our own networks had to be through the COP’s own ‘fringe’. Sadly, that part of our ducking plans did not match the final reality, as the sort of hugely accessible fringe familiar from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that had been anticipated was not on offer. That said, while the wider targeting of the public was derailed by circumstances, even then the Helpdesk+, as representing the IHBC@COP26, succeeded beyond all expectations. The IHBC’s own unique duck offerings were represented most emphatically by the podcasts, as noted: our network-focused initiative that, for public reach, used supplementary tools such as Google ads, Spotify, Amazon Music and more.Well documented across our web pages and NewsBlogs, the podcasts will also feature in our forthcoming Yearbook, with a notice by our professional services officer, Michael Netter, who led on all aspects of that remarkable achievement. A less prominent duck – although, for us, no less significant and experimental – was the development of a COP-aligned public face to our own conservation planning principles. This entailed a rapid recast of our existing guidance to create a fleet but sound hybrid of advocacy and guidance on the potential of our take on conservation at the COP, designed to be publicly-focused, while also rooted in the messages that should have been at the heart of COP26. That duck was inspired by the need for further clarification on the IHBC@COP26’s summary strapline Conserving our Places Conserves our Planet, which itself wryly offered a rhythmic take on the COP’s own acronym. That guidance looked to our recent briefing note on sustainability (which was led by trustees Roy Lewis and Crispin Edwards) to underpin an avowedly popular, even populist, offering to explain just why the IHBC’s conservation conserves the planet. That Helpdesk+ statement on How Conserving our Places Conserves our Planet was distinguished most by the rapidity of its production. It was conceived and drafted on 28 October, reviewed from the next morning, and designed, signed off and posted online in time for the public launch of the COP26 on Monday 1 November. The tie between policy and communications has long been one of our greatest challenges, and among the most inspiring ones too. It has spurred some of our greatest successes: the ToolBox (developed to offer counterpoint to potentially damaging heritage-linked policies); the Conservation Places and People All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) (to respond similarly across political and public agendas); the NewsBlogs and Conservation Wiki (integrated news services for members and networks, linking IHBC messages within wider news interests); and much more. That history is the background to our COP26 paper. Since then we have refined it, with further recasts planned. As for the future of the IHBC@COP26, we can be confident that the achievements and lessons learned there have established a firm foundation for even more innovative approaches in the near future. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk
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