A Beijing Appeal to Copenhagen
A Beijing Appeal to Copenhagen
Imagine a world in which all physical traces of Stonehenge, the Acropolis and the pyramids of Egypt have vanished. The very idea may seem preposterous but a recent appeal made to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen warns of the scenario.
Herb Stovel, professor of Canadian Studies and a leading global authority on heritage conservation, challenged senior heritage officials attending a UNESCO led international training workshop on climate change and heritage to frame their views in “The Beijing Appeal”. Submitted to world-leaders assembled at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, The Beijing Appeal implores politicians to recognize the impact of climate change on heritage and to take action to address these impacts.
“Climate change affects every historic building in the world built in stone, for example,” said Stovel. Carbon emissions are, in effect, rotting stone structures. Unless curtailed, buildings which have withstood the elements for millennia will deteriorate and disappear. One need only look around at blackened stone as evidence of the erosion underway.
Rising waters pose another threat both to natural and cultural heritage.
“Rising ocean levels associated with climate change will swamp every coastal city in the world if unchecked,” said Stovel. He describes many of these cities as unparalleled repositories of heritage and history. “The coasts have always been the point of contact between world civilizations and the key points of mercantile development and exchange.”
Among the areas now under threat of disappearing under the sea are sites located on the Maldives Islands, and a World Heritage site called The Sundarbans – mangrove swamps located in Bangladesh. Closer to home, Fort Prince of Wales and York Factory located near Churchill, Manitoba, are also under threat.
“When the scientists and political leaders meet and talk about losing the coasts they think about having to move millions of people, but they don’t think about the irreparable loss to human memory which will happen at the same time.”
Long considered a threat to our descendents, climate change could also erase our connection to our ancestors.
The workshop on Vulnerability of World Cultural and Natural Heritage Properties in Asia-Pacific to Disasters and Climate Change, was held in Beijing at Peking University and organized by by UNESCO, ICCROM and WHITR-AP, December 6-12, 2009. The workshop was attended by 20 Asia-Pacifica countries and institutions, such as the World Bank, and was the first international course of its kind.
- Herb Stovel (front row, third from left) and Mr. Zhang, former president of the World Heritage Committee (second to left) at Peking University, December 2009.
One Comment
As a Carleton U graduate and now sessional lecturer in Earth Sciences (Climate Change – an Earth Sciences Perspective – ERTH2402), I found the above piece well-intentioned to be sure, but quite misleading scientifically.
“Carbon emissions” are not “carbon”, as many people erroneously assert, but are really “carbon dioxide emissions”. CO2 is a benign gas that is not pollution at all but instead is the very stuff of life as it is a crucial reactant in plant photosynthesis.
Similarly, the comments about sea level rise in the piece are quite misleading. Yes, sea level has been generally rising since the end of the last glacial over 10,000 years ago, but the rates of change are, in comparison with what it has been, quite low. And the idea that the Maldives are sinking due to sea level rise is not supported by the data – take a look at what sea level expert Professor Nils-Axel Mörner of Sweden wrote in the Copenhagen Climate Challenge, another appeal “to world-leaders assembled at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen”, but one that says some very different things to the above referenced Beijing Appeal:
http://tinyurl.com/yarajhu
Note also what Professor Mörner says about sea level rise in Bangladesh and other areas.
There is no question that sea level rise will, and probably is right now, threatening some important repositories of heritage and history. But the assertion that “Rising ocean levels associated with climate change will swamp every coastal city in the world if unchecked” is misleading on two counts – one, that anything unusual is happening at present or will happen very quickly in the foreseeable future with respect to sea level rise, and two, that we can “check” it, or in any way slow it down. Climate changes all the time and sea levels will naturally respond and so we must adapt to this. But the hypothesis (and it has never been more than that) that human-caused so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions, which is what most of Copenhagen was about, are causing a climate crisis is highly speculative with more and more research suggesting this is very unlikely.
The assumption in the above article seems to be that the science of the issue is “settled”. Reality is the complete opposite. In fact we are in an era of negative discovery where the more we learn about climate change science, the more we realize we do not understand.
Formulating rational government policy in the light of this massive uncertainty is a topic that should be discussed and is one of the issues I will suggest to the students in my survey course at Carleton U we debate/discuss in our last lecture coming up on April 6.
For some background on this uncertainty, I suggest readers have a look at the Copenhagen Climate Challenge at
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/
Tom Harris
Instructor – ERTH2402
Executive Director – International Climate Science Coalition