BUILT HERITAGE NOW
Our climate future is built on heritage
Built For Tomorrow is a global call for transformative action to harness the rich cultural and ecological potential of our built heritage toward a resilient, climate positive, and just future.
We believe climate and built heritage need each other.
Heritage-Informed Decarbonization applies wisdom, practices, and built places of the past to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment in the present and future.
HID reduces greenhouse gases while safeguarding or generating cultural value – the shared beliefs, practices, and identities that connect people to each other and their past. HID includes both materials, buildings, and places of significant (tangible heritage) and traditions, knowledge and practices passed down from generation to generation (intangible heritage).
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Most attention in policy is going to new buildings, but the majority of GHG emissions today are associated with operating the existing built fabric.
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Most climate policy treats heritage like a specialized topic, but heritage considerations affect most of the built environment, including new buildings.
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Most climate discourse is firmly rooted in science & technology, but we need to also speak through culture to effectively mobilize people in response to the climate crisis.
DECARBONIZE
HERITAGE
DECARBONIZE HERITAGE
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Unite technological and social climate solutions in a culture shift.
Heritage-informed decarbonization both directly reduces greenhouse gas emissions from buildings as they are, and catalyzes the social shifts needed to reimagine a sustainable future.
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Prioritize continued building (re)use to eliminate emissions.
There is no pathway to 1.5C without addressing existing buildings. Heritage-informed approaches to continued (re)use both avoid embodied emissions of new construction, and eliminate ongoing operational emissions of the buildings we already have.
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Design for stewarding place.
Through strategies like bio-based, local materials to passive conditioning, working with our built heritage both offers lessons for low-carbon design, and fosters a culture of care in construction and maintenance.
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Eliminate the concept of waste in buildings.
Heritage-informed construction and maintenance practices around the world are founded in circularity. They both demonstrate how to extend the highest and best use for buildings and building materials, and foster a marketplace that sees resources rather than waste.
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Include heritage and indigenous voices in climate policymaking.
Through centering cultural heritage, we can bring overlooked perspectives to the table to both access vital knowledge of how to live in balance with the natural environment and engage on-the-ground communities in the global response needed to address climate change.
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Learn from the greatest living laboratory for climate adaptation – the existing built environment.
The places that make up our built heritage both demonstrate how humans have responded to different climates over millennia and provide an unmatched test bed for integrating old and new technologies for future climate adaptation.
