CONTEXT 181 : SEPTEMBER 2024 41 IMOGEN WOOD Connecting people and places with climate impacts A project linking National Trust sites with those already experiencing climate extremes aims to explain the need for action to conserve places with climate resilience in mind. In the 1992 legal thriller, A Few Good Men, lawyer Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) cries out in exasperation: ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe! It only matters what I can prove!’ Today it seems it does not even matter what you can prove. Unless you can make your climate data and facts around the rapidity of change, and how it is already affecting our heritage and places, fit on to one snappy PowerPoint slide in a way that holds attention longer than the latest Insta of a nice new rooftop extension, not many people are going to pay such ‘proof’ any mind when planning their next project or development. So how do we reach the public and professional communities outside the climate and environment bubble in a meaningful way that strips out the science and climate models (‘yawn’); leaves behind the global climate conference battles (‘does it achieve anything anyway?’, people often ask); and overcomes the shortsighted, headline-grabbing policy designed to win green votes, yet make very little difference to the accelerated climate-hazard-filled trajectory we find ourselves on in heritage conservation? The National Trust has been gathering case studies for over five years on sites affected by climate hazards. We have more than 400 historic properties, 28,000 historic buildings and 250,000 hectares of land which offer a large interface between the natural and historic environment. There we can tell and share stories of climate hazards affecting our places, in a way that reaches people and helps them tune in to the plight of buildings, monuments and landscapes that are ill-designed to face the rainfall, heat and drought trends we are experiencing. Adapting on a holistic and landscape scale is essential to conservation at our places. So too is the climate mitigation sorely needed and appreciation of the severity of the problem. This is not just for the public awareness and to justify change (in conservation terms) in the face of climate pressures, but also to hold discussions with statutory stakeholders and work together on appropriate, design-led and significancerooted proposals that preserve assets and setting in context in a way that respects sustainable values. How do we reach people in explaining all this in a meaningful way? In 2022 I was invited by the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO) to visit Cairo and meet the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation (EHRF) to view the threats to historic buildings across the city. Cairo is subjected to climate change and increases in rainfall and simultaneous pressures of permitted development and demolition. These are rapidly eroding (or certainly changing) the historic city’s sense of place and historic skyline. The Historic buildings are being lost as more concrete and brick high-rise structures are built. (All photos: Imogen Wood, National Trust)
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