Historians say greater risk management is needed for cultural heritage. 

Heritage professionals in Australia - a country known for its great environmental and climatic extremes - need to adopt better management practices to mitigate imminent loss, according to an archaeology and cultural heritage academic at Flinders University.

Dr Ania Kotarba-Morley, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at Flinders University, has been reviewing case studies of dramatic disaster events that have affected natural and archived cultural heritage sites and items.

“Climate change impacts and natural disasters such as sea level rise, coastal floods, extreme weather and increasing bushfire frequency and intensity put many archaeological and heritage sites at risk from erosion, inundation and destruction,” says Dr Kotarba-Morley.

“This potential loss of heritage – both tangible and intangible – is grave and requires immediate mitigative action.”

She has been running courses on disaster risk management for cultural heritage. 

More information is accessible here.