International webinar 'Exploring Living Heritage for a Sustainable Future’
We are excited to invite you to the international webinar, “Exploring Living Heritage for a Sustainable Future – Insights from the International ‘Water & Land’ Project.” This seminar is designed for a diverse audience, including experts, researchers, heritage professionals, and individuals interested in intangible cultural heritage, agricultural and environmental history, sustainable development, and climate change.The webinar will explore how traditional knowledge and practices can be leveraged to address modern environmental challenges, emphasizing the positive role of living heritage in climate change adaptation.
At the heart of the webinar is the Flemish-Dutch “Water & Land” project, an innovative project led by the Centre for Agrarian History (CAG) and the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage (KIEN). This project explores how living heritage practices from Flanders and the Netherlands can inspire sustainable solutions for today’s environmental issues. By promoting and enhancing the role of living heritage in climate change adaptation, the project aims to provide policymakers with insights and recommendations while supporting heritage communities in safeguarding these practices.
The project centers around three key themes: water management, biodiversity and soil fertility. Through the research on and audiovisual documentation of traditional practices like traditional irrigation, watermill landscape management, hedge-laying, beekeeping, and composting, the project reveals how these often-overlooked heritage practices can offer critical ecological insights to inform today’s climate policies. By working with a diverse network of tradition bearers, historians, researchers, and civil society actors, the “Water & Land” project not only support the safeguarding of this living heritage but also provides inspiration and recommendations for a more sustainable future.
Laura Danckaert and Chantal Bisschop from CAG, along with Jet Bakels from KIEN, will share key findings and preliminary conclusions from the project. Through concrete examples and engaging videos, they will highlight the opportunities and challenges of using intangible heritage for climate action, focusing on how traditional practices can enhance water management, biodiversity and soil quality.
Chiara Bortolotto from UNESCO Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development at CY Cergy Paris University, will introduce the broader context intangible cultural heritage and contribution to sustainable development. She will discuss key concepts of climate adaptation and reflect on how the “Water & Land” project aligns with the rapidly evolving intersectional field of heritage and climate change.
Text as provided by the organiser(s).
