Climate change could have devastating effect on world’s ancient monuments and cultural heritage, experts warn
- Policymakers in Athens fight to have issue included on the agenda at the UN Summit for Climate Change in New York in September
Climate change could wreak “irreversible damage” on the world’s most precious ancient monuments and other cultural sites, experts warned Saturday as they pushed for UN protection for major global sites.
Academics and policymakers gathered in Athens for a meeting on the threats to world heritage called for an array of tools to predict, measure and counter the effects of climate change.
They are campaigning to have the issue included on the agenda at the UN Summit for Climate Change in New York in September.
Dimitrios Pandermalis, director of the city’s Acropolis Museum said that while environmental damage and deterioration has always been a challenge for monuments, these threats are accelerating.
“The scale of things is different and the destruction can be irreversible,” he said.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) warned in October that warming was on track towards a catastrophic 3°C or 4°C rise, and that avoiding global chaos would require a major transformation.