Education
Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Face of Climate Change: Insights from Recent Workshop
Learn about the recent two-day Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) workshop, which emphasized the preservation and documentation of cultural practices threatened by climate change. Supported by the ACP-EU Culture Programme, the workshop aimed to enhance cultural heritage identification and preservation in the Caribbean region.
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Originally published by barbadostoday.bb (opens in new tab)
As the world continues to change at a rapid pace and with threats such as climate change at our doors, cultural practitioners have realised it is important that the cultural and social practices that have defined us as a people do not disappear.
This was the focus of a recently held two-day Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) workshop at the Courtyard by Marriott, delivered by the Pinelands Creative Workshop as part of its Cultural Heritage Identification and Preservation (CHIP) project which is funded through the ACP-EU Culture Programme (Caribbean) and implemented by the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States with the financial contribution of the EU, with local support from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Director of Cultural Policy and Research with the Culture Division in the Prime Minister’s Office, Donna Greene-Rusinghi pointed out that climate change can actually adversely affect efforts to maintain cultural heritage.
“One major natural disaster can destroy our intangible cultural heritage, in that it can displace the people with the knowledge as well as any documented information they may have. We cannot take for granted that what we have now will remain forever,” she said.
“For example, there are some hotels under construction now that may not be here in the next 30 years, and we have a tendency not to take care of what we have, or to document it, so we have to do that before they deteriorate so we can tell our uncensored stories to the world.”
Workshop facilitator and Chairman of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee in the Prime Minister’s Office (Culture), Rodney Grant, highlighted how some of that heritage can easily be lost.
“What we are looking at is not just what you see physically, like a dance routine, but the thought process that went into it and the knowledge and skills of the practitioners. The biggest threat we face is that, of course, some of the older practitioners may die and if we do not map the knowledge they have, it dies with them, and there is also the risk of giving away knowledge without compromising the intellectual property aspect of it.”
He noted that Barbados is planning to submit documents highlighting the history of road tennis and the Barbados Landship to UNESCO in 2024.
“UNESCO covers some 199 countries, so once these reports go in, that will potentially expose these uniquely Barbadian practices to people all over the world,” he noted.
