Together with the UNESCO Offices in Apia and in Kingston, the Living Heritage Entity is organizing an interregional experience-sharing webinar to mark the closing of the 4-year initiative funded with the generous support of the Japanese-Funds-in-Trust to UNESCO: ‘Capacity building for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in emergencies in Small Island Developing States in the Pacific and the Caribbean’.

Implemented over 2022 and 2025 in the Bahamas, Belize, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, this initative has actively engaged stakeholders in all participating countries in capacity-building activities for the safeguarding of living heritage in emergencies. The project has strengthened the integration of living heritage into disaster risk reduction (DRR) frameworks, while empowering communities to identify and document living heritage that contributes to preparedness, response and recovery efforts. As a result of this project, collaboration has been established between actors involved in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and those working in disaster risk management. This has fostered new intersectoral synergies that benefit both the safeguarding of living heritage and the communities that uphold it, while also contributing to more sustainable and culturally informed disaster risk management practices. 

Key achievements include: (i) Community-based inventorying in project countries, engaging over 400 stakeholders, notably local communities, who are now equipped to conduct inventories with a focus on disaster risk awareness;

(ii) Enhanced dialogue and advocacy for culture and DRR in the two regions (i.e. national offices for emergencies sensitized to the importance of living heritage safeguarding; regional policy frameworks for DRR enhanced, such as the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between UNESCO and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency); and (iii) Increased international visibility of synergies between intangible cultural heritage safeguarding and DRR in global fora (i.e. presence in the 4th SIDS Summit in Antigua and Barbuda, in the 2024 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, and in the nineteenth session of the 2003 Convention’s Intergovernmental Committee).

Dates and hour:

The objectives are the following:

1. Showcase national experiences in conducting community-based inventories integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR),
2. Consolidate lessons learnt from both Caribbean and Pacific SIDS,
3. Foster interregional South-South cooperation by sharing insights on institutional collaboration between culture and DRR entities, highlighting emerging cross-sectoral mechanisms supported by the project and new opportunities for further collaboration.