With thousands of outstanding examples of ancient architecture, artifacts, and landscapes sprinkled all around the continent, “Europe has good reasons to celebrate its cultural heritage,” Cristina Sabbioni, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Bologna, told ESOF attendees yesterday. Europe’s rich cultural heritage is at the heart of both the local tourism industry and European identity, she added.
Prompted by its impressive cultural history, Europe has pioneered many aspects of conservation science, but Sabbioni is worried about losing the edge. “Europe has a long experience in cultural heritage scientific research and has the world leadership in this sector. But to maintain this competitiveness… coordination is needed at European level,” Sabbioni said.
Starting in October, a new European Network on Research Programme Applied to the Protection of Tangible Cultural Heritage (NET-HERITAGE) should help foster cooperation. A partnership of 14 Member States, “NET-Heritage is the first… initiative ever attempting to coordinate research across European countries in this field,” Sabbioni said. Among the remits of NET-HERITAGE are making research on the protection of cultural heritage more efficient and less fragmented across Europe, promoting the use of research results for conservation purposes, and putting cultural heritage sustainability higher on the political agenda.
Environmental factors such as air pollution and temperature are all eating away at the beauty and richness of Europe’s cultural heritage. There is “evidence that in the last century, a dramatic increase in the damage of the surface [of cultural heritage examples] has occurred,” Sabbioni said. But how climate change will affect the conservation of cultural heritage largely remains a question mark, one that European-funded Noah’s Ark project researchers have been among the few to lean over.
This year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't look at the potential effects of climate change on cultural heritage, while it did include leisure and tourism, Sabbioni said. "I think as Europeans, we have to show it as a scandal, something we can't accept. We must do something in terms of awareness of the problem, then we can adopt strategies for...facing the the future problems."
--Elisabeth Pain
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