Preserving Legacies

09/10/2026

📣 2027 Preserving Legacies Cohort applications are OPEN!

Do you work with a place that is culturally significant to your community?
Are you ready to help safeguard it from the impacts of climate change?

The Preserving Legacies Cohort is a three-year, locally led journey designed to help local leaders around the world move from understanding climate risk to taking action.

🌱 LEARN: About climate science, risk, and adaptation, virtually and through an international Workshop.
🔎 ASSESS: Co-create a climate risk assessment with your community and stakeholders, understanding what they value most and what is most at risk.
⚒ ACT: Design and implement an adaptation action tailored to your community’s needs and culture.

Each year, we select two local Climate Custodians from 10 heritage places to join the program.

📣Know someone who should apply? Tag them below or share this post.
📅 Applications close January 8, 2027.
👉 Learn more, join an info session, and apply: heritageadapts.org/cohort

06/10/2026

What can ancient footprints tell us about the future?

In Ileret, northern Kenya, more than 97 hominin footprints tell the story of a thriving river ecosystem 1.5 million years ago.

Today, the Daasanach community is facing severe droughts that have devastated livestock and dried up water sources. Some areas have gone more than two years without rain.

At the same time, the community is actively protecting and sharing its heritage, from building shelters over the footprints to creating an Interpretation Center and documenting their story.

Now, Climate Custodians Betty Karanja and Albert Otieno are bringing local and diverse stakeholders together to identify what matters most to the community and what is at risk from climate change.

These conversations will help pave the way toward locally led adaptation action.

05/10/2026

What can ancient societies teach us about preparing for the disasters of the future?

From Inca stonework designed to withstand earthquakes to ancient Egyptian approaches to flooding, this National Geographic read explores how people have long adapted to environmental extremes by working with nature, designing for uncertainty, and drawing on community knowledge.

At Preserving Legacies, we believe the past can be a powerful resource for imagining more resilient futures. Sometimes, adaptation starts by looking back at what communities already know.

🌿 Read:

From ancient Egyptian flood strategies to Mayan agricultural techniques, the ancient world can teach us how to live with environmental extremes.

01/10/2026

Shenkeng District is taking the next step toward climate adaptation. 🌱

Through a community-led climate risk assessment, local residents, tea farmers, Old Street shopkeepers, and stakeholders explored what makes Shenkeng unique and what needs to be protected.

They identified tea culture as central to Shenkeng’s identity and outlined five areas for climate action: water, slopes, climate technology, capacity building, and legal frameworks.

Today, Climate Custodians Jessica and Alex are sharing the work so far with the community and local authorities.

The Climate Risk & Adaptation report is on its way.

The work continues.

30/09/2026

We’re truly excited to be part of the ICOMOS General Assembly 2026 in Borneo! 🌏

If you’ll be in Borneo from October 19–22, come by and say hello at our Preserving Legacies / Heritage Adapts! interactive stand.

We’d love to meet you, share what we’re working on, and connect with others who are passionate about protecting heritage in a changing climate.

Come find us and say hi! 👋

Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) Icomos General Assembly 2026

Proud to welcome Preserving Legacies as an exhibitor at the ICOMOS GA2026.

With impacts from the Super El Niño already being felt around the world, the time is now to prioritize adaptation—and Heritage Adapts! helps you to do just that! With free training, tools, and a global community, the campaign is democratizing climate adaptation for stewards of heritage sites and cultural practices worldwide.

Meet members from their global coalition, including PreservingLegacies and ICOMOS, at the Heritage Exposition and learn more about their work to support heritage stewards in the face of climate change.

📅 19–22 October 2026 | 9:00 AM–5:00 PM
📍 Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK)

30/09/2026

Preserving Legacies and Heritage Adapts! Help Launch the EU Partnership on Resilient Cultural Heritage in Marseille

Yesterday in Marseille, cultural‑heritage adaptation took a major step forward as the EU Partnership on Resilient Cultural Heritage officially launched — a decade‑long effort to strengthen research, evidence, and coordinated action at the intersection of cultural heritage and climate change. With 90 partners from 30 countries and a €215M budget, the Partnership aims to fill one of the field’s most persistent gaps: the limited research and evidence base on how climate and environmental change impact heritage, and which adaptation strategies actually work. heritagerese...

Among the voices shaping the launch were Salma Sabour, PhD, and Andrew Potts, who brought global perspectives on locally led action and movement‑wide mobilization.

Salma Sabour presented the Preserving Legacies model — a framework for locally led adaptation rooted in plural knowledge systems, where community expertise, scientific insight, and cultural practice work together to safeguard heritage. Using the work of communities comprising the Grapes of Ch*****ne cultural landscape as an example, her intervention underscored that resilience emerges from the ground up, through custodians who understand their sites, traditions, and risks intimately.

Andrew Potts introduced Heritage Adapts! The global campaign of local stewards uniting to take action on adaptation to protect their heritage sites and cultural practices from climate change by 2030. He emphasized that as climate impacts accelerate, the heritage sector must scale action rapidly — and that Heritage Adapts! is designed to mobilize, connect, and equip stewards everywhere.

Together, their contributions highlighted why the new EU Partnership matters: research and evidence must flow directly into practice, empowering stewards with the knowledge, tools, and networks needed to adapt heritage in a warming world.

30/09/2026

Last Saturday, we screened Architects of the Earth at the Global Peace 360 Film Festival in Orlando, Florida.

If you missed the chance to see it on the big screen, you can now watch the film for free on our YouTube channel!

Architects of the Earth takes us to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Koutammakou in West Africa, where local heritage experts and communities are working to protect traditional earthen homes from the growing impacts of climate change.

Here, ancestral knowledge meets modern technology to find new ways of caring for a living cultural landscape. Because heritage is not static. It is lived, built, adapted, and passed from one generation to the next.

The film follows the people on the frontlines of this work, exploring what it means to adapt to a changing climate while protecting identity, place, and continuity.

🎬 Watch Architects of the Earth for free on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCDl7cB1JIE

CREDITS
Presented by: Preserving Legacies
A Film by: The Convergence
In Association with: National Geographic Society, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
Supported by: Iron Mountain
Director: Elise Orlowski
Executive Producer: Victoria Herrmann
Producers: Michael O. Snyder Photography, Daniel Cervenka
Line Producers: Ibrahim Tchan, Augustin N’Batchaka, @ Casimir Batchatchile
Local Producer: Venus Dossou
Director of Photography: Jakub Chlouba
Editor: Elise Orlowski
Assistant Editor: Reza Tene
Sound Engineer: Tim Burns
Translations: Rosie Poirier
Impact Producer: Rosie Poirier
Fixer: Fred Vedomey
Featuring: Ibrahim Tchan, Augustin N’Batchaka, Casimir Batchatchilé
Also Featuring: Ichristophe Oudole, Michel Dissani, Tempe Wante, Christian N’Sahouti, N’Cao N’tcha, Ghistain Kouagou N’tcha
Special Thanks: Josias Obonte, Complexe Scolaire Privé Fraternité de Natitingou; Benin Volunteer Team Corps (Roland Mante, Romaric Zinmonse, Francis Anoum, Pélage Natta, Valérie N’Kouei, Kouagou Natta, Vincent Offio)

Architects of the Earth takes us to the UNESCO World Heritage site ...

29/09/2026

READ OF THE WEEK 📖

What can we do about climate change? And perhaps just as importantly: what do we want to do, and why?

This week, we’re reading “Distinguish between feasibility and desirability when assessing climate response options,” published in Nature.

The authors make a deceptively simple distinction: feasibility asks what can be done; desirability asks what would be good or appropriate to do. Climate response options can be technically possible without being desirable, just as an option that communities value may not yet be feasible.

This distinction matters deeply for heritage and climate adaptation.

At Preserving Legacies, we work with communities to understand climate risks to the places and practices they value, but adaptation is never simply a question of finding a technically possible solution. It also involves asking what is appropriate to the place, whose values and knowledge are reflected, what trade-offs are acceptable, and what communities want to carry forward. That is why locally led adaptation matters.

The paper also calls for greater transparency about the values and principles underlying assessments of desirability. Rather than presenting value judgments as facts, making those assumptions visible creates space for more informed and inclusive deliberation.

🔗 Read the open-access article:

The current literature on assessing climate change response options does not sufficiently distinguish between assessing options in terms of their feasibility and in terms of their desirability. One example of this is the IPCC feasibility assessment framework. We argue that assessments of climate res...

25/09/2026

🌍 What happens when heritage and climate leaders come together?

Yesterday, we gathered for Climate Week NYC at the World Monuments Fund headquarters at Rockefeller Center for a conversation about heritage, climate adaptation, and the knowledge and solutions already embedded in culture.

And we had a full house. 🤝

From NYC to Mexico City to Türkiye, the conversation brought together heritage leaders, climate experts, policymakers, and site stewards to explore how heritage can help shape a more climate-resilient future.

One idea kept coming through: many of the solutions we need are already present in our cultures, communities, and relationships with place.

Sometimes, we just need to re-learn how to listen to the knowledge carried through our ancestors, stories, landscapes, and traditions.

We were also proud to introduce Heritage Adapts!, a free, action-driven platform connecting heritage stewards with training, practical tools, localized climate data, and a global community working toward adaptation.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us, shared their knowledge, and helped make the conversation possible, and to our co-hosts at World Monuments Fund.

📸 The talented Taylor Mickal beautifully captured this moment. Thank you, Taylor, for documenting the people and energy in the room.

24/09/2026

We’re proud to be featured in Orion Magazine with Architects of the Earth, a powerful photo essay exploring the people, knowledge, and living architecture of Koutammakou, the homeland of the Batammariba in Togo and Benin.

Michael’s photographs bring us into the world of the takienta, the earthen tower homes that have evolved over generations to respond to the climate, culture, and ways of life of the Batammariba. But the story is about much more than architecture.

It is about knowledge.

Today, the takienta face increasing pressure from climate change, changing development patterns, and the loss of traditional building knowledge. Through Preserving Legacies, Site Custodians Ibrahim TCHAN, Augustine N’Batchaka, and Casimir Batchatchile worked with their communities to document these risks and identify pathways for adaptation.

Their locally led climate assessment revealed something profound: the takienta itself may offer part of the solution. As Ibrahim Tchan says in the story: “The answers to our challenges are right here.”

If you want to learn more, read Architects of the Earth in Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/architects-of-the-earth/