FAQ
Adaptation is complex and you must have questions so we break it down for you below. You can also find more information by exploring the full guided roadmap Action Journey, reviewing our Eligibility Requirements, and reading our Platform FAQs.
Heritage Adapts! is a global community of local stewards uniting behind a shared pledge to take adaptation action to protect their heritage sites and cultural practices from the impacts of climate change by 2030—and to support one another through the process to actually do it. Our hub for adapting is the Community of Action, an online platform where you can connect with others and find practical tools, including:
- The Action Journey, a three-stage roadmap that guides you through locally led adaptation, helping to make the complexities of adaptation actionable—from deepening your understanding of climate and heritage, to completing a locally led risk assessment and making an adaptation plan, and implementing and learning from actions.
- The Regional Climate Data Hub, where you can download localised climate data in an accessible, interactive format to help you weave science with the knowledge your community already holds. It is supported by online training so that you can use the data on your own terms.
- The Commons, communal spaces like discussion boards and virtual events that allow you to connect with others who understand the stakes, because the best advice comes from those who live it. Shared spaces also include a Resource Library, Member Directory, and Service Provider Directory.
No matter where you are, the resources you have, or the type of heritage you steward—natural and cultural places, objects and collections, intangible cultural heritage and practices, and beyond—you belong here. And if you don't represent a site or practice to adapt but want to contribute to global climate action for heritage, you belong here too. Together, we adapt better.
Heritage Adapts! is for any heritage steward across the full spectrum of heritage—natural and cultural places, objects and collections, intangible cultural heritage and practices, and beyond. To take the pledge, you must self-certify that you meet the Eligibility Requirements. This is not meant to be restrictive, but to ensure those pledging have the authorization to do so.
If you do not meet the pledge requirements or if you are a professional, researcher, government official, advocate, or anyone else working in or interested in heritage and climate change, there is a place for you here too! Simply join "without taking the pledge" to access the Commons community space to contribute to global climate action for heritage.
Can more than one steward make a pledge regarding the same or similar heritage site or cultural practice? Yes! Heritage sites and cultural practices have disparate and diverse stakeholders and rightsholders and while it is ideal for these to work in concert to tackle climate change, this is not always possible. Some heritage sites cover vast areas and even cross national borders, while many cultural practices are enjoyed by diverse groups across the world. Learn more in our Eligibility Requirements.
Can more than one member of the same group or organization participate? Yes! We encourage multiple members of the same team to join. While there is not a shared organizational dashboard, you can each individually track progress on your dashboard, engage in discussion boards, attend virtual events, and more. Learn more in our Eligibility Requirements.
Does Heritage Adapts! verify eligibility? No, verification is self-certified and joining Heritage Adapts! does not imply endorsement of your work. Stewards making the pledge take responsibility for certifying their compliance with the Eligibility Requirements, including that the individual is authorized to do so by an existing group of stakeholders or rightsholder of the indicated heritage site or cultural practice. Any steward making a Heritage Adapts! pledge should conduct any needed assessment and obtain any needed authorization consistent with relevant governance prior to making the Pledge. Should it come to the attention of Heritage Adapts! that a steward did not meet or no longer meets the Eligibility Requirements, Heritage Adapts! reserves the right to remove them or take other applicable action.
The pledge is a simple commitment of intent—to take at least one locally led climate adaptation action for your heritage site or cultural practice by 2030. The pledge takes one minute and connects you immediately to a worldwide community of stewards doing the same. The pledge specifically states:
"I/We pledge to work to implement a locally led climate adaptation action or adaptive strategy for my/our heritage site or cultural practice by 2030."
Taking an adaptation action by 2030 is what counts as a fulfilled pledge toward our goal of 3000 by 2030. Whether one steward or a whole community is working toward that action, what counts is the heritage site or cultural practice being protected, not the number of people protecting it.
Who can take the pledge?
Can you define the terms being used in the pledge?
The Community of Action is your hub for taking climate adaptation action for your heritage site or cultural practice. It is an online platform that combines a personal account and dashboard with community spaces, including two core components:
The Commons - This is the community space available to anyone. It includes discussion boards, virtual events, a resource library, service provider directory, member messaging, and more.
The Action Journey - This is a guided, three-stage roadmap for locally led adaptation available to heritage stewards that take the pledge. Built on an evidence-based framework developed and refined with stewards in the field, you can use it as much or as little as you need, at your own pace. Based on questions that you answer during registration, you will start in a recommended stage, which you can change at any time:
Stage A - Learn: Enhance your climate and heritage literacy
Stage B - Assess: Create a community-led risk assessment and make an adaptation plan
Stage C - Act: Take an adaptation action, monitor and evaluate
Explore the full Action Journey here.
The Action Journey is supplemented by additional discussion boards, virtual events, resources, and our Regional Climate Data Hub that are only available to stewards who have taken the pledge.
Read our Platform FAQs here for even more details.
Visit the Join page and select the path that's right for you — Steward (for those pledging to adapt a heritage site or cultural practice), Contributor (for individuals who want to access community resources but do not represent a site or practice to adapt), or Partner (for organizations supporting the mission). You'll complete a short intake form, and your account will be created automatically.
If you are a heritage steward taking the pledge, first you will click to "Take the Pledge" or "Join". If you meet the Eligibility Requirements, you will self-certify and take the pledge. You will answer a series of registration questions about who you are, your heritage place or practice, and where you are in your adaptation journey. You will be recommended into a stage of the Action Journey, which you can change at any time. And then you're ready to start connecting, learning, and acting! Ready to join as a steward? Click here.
If you are an advocate, government official, practitioner, or researcher, or anyone else that is not a heritage steward taking the pledge, and would like to engage with the community and resources, you can join "without taking the pledge" and answer a series of registration questions to set up your account. Ready to join as a contributor? Click here.
Connection: We can't adapt alone. We need each other for advice, discussion, inspiration, motivation, and more! When you join Heritage Adapts! you are immediately connected to a global community of stewards like yourself, as well as others working on and passionate about heritage, climate change, community resilience, and adaptation. You can engage with them through discussion boards, messaging, and virtual events from day one.
Guidance: Adaptation can be overwhelming. Heritage Adapts! provides a guided roadmap called the Action Journey that meets you where you are—whether deepening understanding, assessing risk, developing plans, or implementing and learning from actions. Built on an evidence-based, three-stage framework developed and refined with stewards in the field, you can use it as much or as little as you need, at your own pace.
Accessible Climate Data: Your community already holds deep knowledge of your place—the patterns, the changes, the signs, the embodied experience. Scientific data can add another layer of understanding to create a more full picture, both informing and strenghtening your case for action. Our Regional Climate Data Hub, created by Dr. Salma Sabour, puts localised climate and environmental data in your hands to weave with what your community already knows. Accessible downloadable formats work even on slow internet connections, and training is included so you stay in control of the data, using it on your own terms.
Accountability: Taking a pledge and joining a community of stewards working toward the same goal creates accountability—to yourself, to your community, and to the broader movement. When the work gets hard, knowing others are alongside you makes it easier to keep going. And being part of a recognized global movement gives weight to your work when making the case to colleagues, institutions, funders, or community partners—because you're not acting alone, you're acting as part of something bigger.
Recognition: Your action counts. Both for your community and globally. Heritage Adapts! is recognized as a UNFCCC Plan to Accelerate Solutions aligned with the Global Goal on Adaptation, meaning your locally led action connects to the global climate impact and contributes to the heritage sector's collective response to climate change.
This is a guided, three-stage roadmap for locally led adaptation to help heritage stewards fulfill their pledge. Built on an evidence-based framework developed and refined with stewards in the field, you can use it as much or as little as you need, at your own pace. Based on questions that you answer during registration, you will start in a recommended stage, which you can change at any time:
Stage A - Learn: Deepen your climate and heritage understanding
Stage B - Assess: Create a community-led risk assessment and make an adaptation plan
Stage C - Act: Take an adaptation action, monitor and evaluate
Explore the full Action Journey here.
The Action Journey is supplemented by additional discussion boards, virtual events, resources, and our Regional Climate Data Hub that are only available to stewards who have taken the pledge.
How long does it take to complete the “Action Journey”?
While every heritage site and cultural practice is unique, and will be starting at a different point in their adaptation journey, we have found on average that the time commitment is as follows:
Stage A: 50 hours
Stage B: 180 hours
Stage C: 100 hours
Adaptation is an ongoing process so there is no time limit for participation. However, the pledge and goal do ask that at least one adaptive strategy is implemented by 2030.
Do I have to complete every part of the Action Journey?
No. The three-stage action journey is flexible and iterative, allowing users to dip in and out of its resources and guidance as needed. The aim is to support users to progress through all the dimensions of locally led risk assessment, adaptation planning and implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.
What happens after I complete the final stage?
If you complete the final stage, Stage C: Act, that means you will have taken an action to safeguard your site or practice from climate change and you will have fulfilled your pledge! Adaptation is an ongoing process so the work is never done and while you may not use the Action Journey as regularly, the Community is still here for you and you can help others by sharing your story and insights!
What kind of support is available along the way?
The community is always there for you through discussion boards, virtual events, member messaging, and more. There will also be office hours programmed for stewards in the Action Journey as well as the option to email or message our help desk.
Find more detail in our Eligibility Requirements,
Steward - At Heritage Adapts!, we use "steward" as a word to describe anyone who cares for heritage. And once you take the pledge and join, you will be joining as a steward. The work that we each do is incredibly unique, personal, and varied and it is impossible for one word to describe who we are across professions, communities, and passions, but we had to chose a way to describe who we are collectively and thought "steward" was the best fit. For those who speak French, our colleagues expressed the sentiment as Gardien du Patrimone. If there is another word in your language that represents something similar, please share, we'd love to hear from you.
Heritage Site - For purposes of the Heritage Adapts! Pledge, it includes all tangible cultural heritage, meaning assets that have some physical embodiment of cultural values such as monuments, heritage cities, historic towns, buildings, archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, cultural objects -movable and immovable-, documents, collections, and museums (UNESCO WHC et al. 2013; ICOM 2014b). A heritage site can also include a steward of movable and documentary heritage, which include but are not limited to institutions such as archives, libraries, museums and other educational, cultural and research organizations (UNESCO. 2015). Rightsholders or stakeholders for any of these types of assets may take the Heritage Adapts! Pledge.
Cultural Practices - For purposes of the Heritage Adapts! Pledge, it includes any and all elements of intangible cultural heritage as that term is defined by UNESCO. This generally includes traditional and Iindigenous traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. Much of traditional and Indigenous and traditional knowledge is also articulated and expressed through cultural practices, as passed through generations, so should be treated as such. The wider framing of Indigenous and local knowledge systems are separate epistemological and ontological considerations larger than cultural practices.
Locally Led Adaptation - Adaptation where you, the steward, lead the way. You and your communities, custodians, Indigenous peoples, cultural practitioners, and local institutions hold the decision-making power over how adaptation actions are defined, prioritised, funded, implemented, monitored, and evaluated. This ensures the people most affected by climate change can identify what matters most, define success on their own terms, shape the allocation of resources, and guide long-term strategies. In this way, adaptation is grounded in local values, lived experience, and plural knowledge systems, strengthening accountability, equity, and the durability and sustainability of climate actions over time.
Adaptation Action or Adaptive Strategy - For purposes of the Heritage Adapts! Pledge, fulfilling your pledge means that you have taken at least one action to protect your heritage site or cultural practice from the impacts of climate change. You are welcome to take more or being implementing an entire strategy. This includes both “hard adaptation” measures like seawalls or water management systems and “soft adaptation” measures like wetland restoration, improved building codes, early warning systems, community education, enhancing social networks, or knowledge sharing. Adaptation may be reactive, responding to impacts already experienced, or proactive, anticipating future risks. It may be incremental, adjusting existing systems, or transformational, reshaping governance, livelihoods, or spatial arrangements to create new climate-resilient and sustainable development pathways. Some strategies are designed for near-term climate conditions; others aim to remain effective under higher levels of global warming and over longer time horizons. So whether you are building a flood defense or educating users on climate risks, your work can fulfill your Heritage Adapts! Pledge.
Importantly, adaptive strategies should also consider equity and justice. Who participates in decisions? Who benefits? Who bears the costs? Are Indigenous, local, and traditional knowledge systems recognised and respected? Does the strategy support cultural continuity and intergenerational wellbeing?
Your community already holds deep knowledge of your place—the patterns, the changes, the signs, the lived experience, the generational wisdom. Our Regional Climate Data Hub puts localised climate and environmental data in your hands to weave with what your community already knows. It comes in an accessible downloadable format that works even on slow internet connections, and training is included so you stay in control of the data, using it on your own terms.
No, it is free! The cost is currently being underwritten through a generous grant from the National Geographic Society as well as contributions from the Heritage Adapts! Leadership Partners.
The Commons are the communal spaces in the Community of Action where anyone can engage and find support. It includes discussion boards, virtual events, a resource library, and service provider directory.
Heritage Adapts! is led by a coalition of partners spearheaded by Preserving Legacies and including:
- Agence du Patrimoine Culturel du Mali || Mali Cultural Heritage Agency
- Climate Heritage Network, Heritage Management Organization
- Europa Nostra and ICLEI, respectively as Project Leader and partner of the EU-funded European Heritage Hub
- ICH NGO Forum (Working Group on Living Heritage & Climate Change)
- International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
- International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
- Julie's Bicycle, Shadhona - A Center for Advancement of Southasian Culture
- World Monuments Fund
View more information about our partners here.
Yes, they are different! HACA, now called Heritage in Climate Policy Alliance (HCPA), is focused on policy advocacy for heritage. While members of HCPA participate in Heritage Adapts!, they are not the same thing.
Learn more about partnerships here.
Heritage Adapts! is recognized by the UN's climate agency—the UNFCCC—as a Plan to Accelerate Solutions aligned with the Global Goal on Adaptation target 9(g).
If not please email help@heritageadapts.org. We hope to see you in the community!
Still have questions?
Reach out to a member of our team and we will do our best to assist you.