Call for Projects to Protect Cultural Heritage from Climate Change Impact

The ALIPH Foundation has launched a Call for Projects to Protect Cultural Heritage from the impact of climate change.

This initiative, which prioritizes projects in Africa, will support practical and field-based projects to protect or rehabilitate cultural heritage. It will also finance capacity building for local professionals and promote applied research, including in areas that address the advancement and transfer of traditional knowledge.

This strategy addresses the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on cultural heritage (built, mobile, and intangible, as well as the intersection of cultural/natural heritage) and will also consider the role of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge systems, and indigenous communities in the fight against climate change in vulnerable areas.

Categories

Categories of projects are:

Protection, Conservation, Rehabilitation

Within this category, ALIPH seeks to support a series of concrete projects that will address, on the ground, the protection of cultural heritage and climate change in Africa. Particular attention will be given to projects providing concrete protection measures and conservation/rehabilitation outcomes

These projects can include the following type of actions:

• Conservation plans;
• Disaster risk reduction strategies;
• Emergency measures (documentation, inventories, consolidation, etc.);
• Sheltering of cultural goods and in situ protection;
• Conservation or rehabilitation measures;
• Outreach.

Two scales of initiatives can be proposed:

• Small to mid-size projects involving protection/conservation/rehabilitation initiatives at small to middle-scale heritage sites.
• Landmark projects targeting protection/conservation/rehabilitation initiatives at high visibility heritage sites with a demonstrated impact of climate change (floods, desertification, etc.). These projects will be structured around ambitious protection/conservation/rehabilitation initiatives that will attempt to integrate traditional knowledge and latest results of research on climate change and cultural heritage into their strategy and implementation.
• Capacity-building and knowledge transfer
• Within this theme, ALIPH seeks to fund capacity-building and knowledge transfer efforts to broadly support the expertise on the intersection of cultural heritage and climate change in Africa. The goal of these projects must be to train, on the ground, the next generation of experts, providing administrative and/or technical skills in heritage protection and project management.
• These projects can address tangible or intangible heritage. They will contribute to reinforcing the following skills:
• Crisis management;
• Emergency documentation and conservation measures;
• Post-disaster and post-conflict damage and needs assessment;
• Sustainable site management;
• Site conservation/rehabilitation;
• Transfer of traditional knowledge;
• Heritage project management (including grant writing, financial reporting, etc.)
• ALIPH will favor projects that carry out in-situ/on-the-job capacity-building with concrete outcomes for local heritage and professionals. Regional or multi-country initiatives are encouraged.
• This category of projects is only available to institutions and organizations.

Actionable research

• Within this theme, ALIPH seeks to support directly actionable research on heritage and climate change. For this Call, ALIPH is particularly interested in the following research themes:
• Predictive modeling on conflict and/or climate and its impact on cultural heritage management and conservation. This research would project the evolution of the environment in a given area in order to develop more sustainable strategies of protection and rehabilitation.
• Documentation and operationalization of traditional practices and knowledge that lead to resilience in the face of climate change or conflict. These can include practices as varied as water and land management strategies, construction techniques, risk management systems, etc.
• Technical research projects looking, for instance, at the evolution of raw material use (access, availability, reaction to changing conditions, etc.), heritage-compliant carbon sequestering materials, new conservation methods, etc.
• Case studies on good practices pertaining to heritage site management impacted by climate change in terms of prevention/mitigation, adaptation, risk management, policy development, community engagement, etc.
• This category of projects is only available to institutions and organizations

Funding Information

• USD 10 million

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible operators and institutions:
• Institutions in charge of the protection, conservation, and promotion of cultural heritage;
• Private organizations (foundations, NGO, non-profit, charity, associations, etc.);
• Universities and research centres;
• Private, for-profit organizations can be considered based on the overall interest of the project and the lack of availability of non-profit alternatives.
• The applicants must demonstrate that they have:
• Previous relevant experience (including management of projects of comparable size);
• Relevant expertise (including capacity for research project as applicable);
• Financial stability;
• Capacity to deliver the project;
• Local partnerships, and the necessary agreements with local/national authorities and/or communities.

Source: https://www.aliph-foundation.org/en/our-grants