UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

MONDIACULT 2025 – A commentary and analysis

2025-10-01

MONDIACULT – UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development took place in Barcelona (29 Sept-1 Oct 2025). UNESCO is the United Nations organization that promotes cooperation in education, science, culture and communication to foster peace, security and sustainable development worldwide. “Culture of Peace” has long been one of UNESCO’s most memorable concepts.

With this in mind, it was surprising that at MONDIACULT there were Ministers of Culture that emphasized culture as the soul of a country and an expression of national freedom, the need for cultural preparedness in the face of military threats, and cultural policy as a form of survival, security and defence strategy, not the least because foreign forces are known to attack first the cultural fabric that binds societies together.

Such language is very different from the general commitment of all states not only to UNESCO as such, including its Culture of Peace programme, but also to cultural rights as a part of global human rights. The logic of war must not trump culture. As Alexandra Xanthaki, the UN Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights, emphasized several times during the conference, cultural rights are about the rights of individuals and groups: they oblige states to implement the rights of minorities, marginalized people and migrants, among others, not to foster or support majority state culture. I would add that culture should not be what sustains people when everything else is taken away from them, but what prevents states or anybody from taking away everything from anyone in the first place.

Similarly surprising to me was that too some of the discussions were still about protecting and preserving cultural heritage or returning it to their rightful owners. This is a perspective of culture as a valuable resource and property, something you don’t want to be deprived of as that would mean, according to some, that you lost your “heartbeat” and your past. This is a familiar view that is sometimes also taken regarding cultural heritage. But it chimes poorly with the many statements we heard during the conference that culture is primarily about our common humanity. Indeed, UNESCO’s very constitution from 1945 discusses culture in the context of a general human (and not the nations’) dignity.

There is one additional aspect to this. When some policy makers declared in Barcelona that culture must be safeguarded because “culture is who we are”, I partly disagree. In many respects, the world is not in a good state because of who we were, and are. Culture is also about who we would like to be, or perhaps become, as human beings on our shared planet. That is why it was disappointing to see that MONDIACULT 2025 did not take up the spirit of the 2024 United Nations Summit of the Future and improve on the recognition of culture in the Pact for the Future.

Today, humanity is at a time of profound global transformation, requiring us to change course so that we do not risk tipping into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown. But what exactly does this mean for cultural heritage which is the way in which we today recall the past? After all, as the Spanish Minister of Culture had it at MONDIACULT, “culture is where all changes begin” – it is about transformation, innovation and creativity. In other words, the question is not how to safeguard culture and heritage ahead of threats that may be anticipated in an uncertain future. One key question is rather how we make sense of the past in a world where the future is not what it used to be (as Marek Tamm once wrote). Culture has some of the answers: long-term thinking, embracing change, and understanding what it means to be human.

Finally, what is the way forward? Senior decision-makers emphasized on several occasions the need of evidence-based policy and the benefits of culture for meeting indicators of environmental, economic, and social development as well as for fostering national identities and even as an asset for national defence. But this does not fit very well to Pedro Sanchez, Prime Minister of Spain, declaring in his Opening Speech that “culture invites us to dream”. Similarly, Octavio Paz was quoted as saying that the world is a projection of our images and, one might add, of our narratives and worldviews. Others talked in this context about a holistic perspective we need to take—one that not the least integrates culture and nature. According to that view, we do not benefit from culture when it is part of a fragmented and siloed view of the world, sought to be instrumentalized for various purposes, and regularly assessed for its value, in particular its contribution to gross domestic product (GDP).

Instead, the kind of culture that gives us hope in the present time is what provides happiness and wellbeing for people. That is why we need to develop and implement measures of progress for human work that go beyond GDP. Culture can be the place where such change begins.

Cornelius Holtorf, UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden

MONDIACULT 2025

I spent a week in Barcelona to attend MONDIACULT – UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (29 Sept-1 Oct 2025). I arrived early to take part in the Civic Agora organised in Barcelona (26-27 Sept 2025).

Both events provided many opportunities to learn about current developments in global cultural policy and also to talk to other UNESCO Chairs, senior politicians, policy makers, and representatives of NGOs about various dimensions of heritage futures.

MONDIACULT attracted more than 100 Ministers of Culture and overall more than 1,200 participants from around the world.

Highlights included several brilliant presentations by Alexandra Xanthaki, the UN Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights. She emphasized the responsibility of states for cultural rights of individuals and groups, while criticizing states caring only about majority cultures and marginalising minorities and people at the margin of society.

Another highlight was the launch av Version 1 for a Culture Goal av Culture2030Goal campaign. Such a goal is very strongly supported by the Ministers of Cultures, and policy makers attending MONDIACULT, as reflected in the Outcome Document. Also significant was the launch of the UNESCO Global Report on Cultural Policies. These documents are the basis for further discussions among various NGOs over he coming years and will serve to influence the UN member states in favour of giving culture a strong position on the Post-2030 Agenda.

(Figure shows the Swedish Delegation incl Secretary of State)

I was able to have many conversations on heritage futures (short and long!), and will be following up many of them, including with the following people:

Politicians and government representatives

UNESCO

NGOs etc

UNESCO Chairs

  • Vicky Karaiskou, UNESCO Chair on Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy, Cyprus
  • Roland Benedikter, UNESCO Chair in Interdisciplinary Anticipation and Global-Local Transformation, Italy
  • Alicja Jagielska-Burduk, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Law, Poland
  • Julius Heinecke, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy for the Arts in Development, Germany
  • Chiara Bortolotto, UNESCO Chair in Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development, France

Various activities July – September 2025

2025-09-30

Cornelius Holtorf contributed to the ICOMOS questionnaire entitled “A Spot on the Horizon: Reflecting on the Future of the Heritage Field and ICOMOS’ Role in It!” (1 August 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Dr Paulius Jurčys of Prifina about creating an AI twin for the Chair on Heritage Futures (20 August 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a talk entitled “Public Archaeology and the challenge of long-term communication lessons for nuclear waste management” in a session on “The Power of Public Archaeology to Tackle the Sustainable Development Goals” organised by Lenore Thompson and Veronica Testolini at the 31st Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists held online (4 September 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf held an informal background conversation with journalist Nicke Nordmark preparing a programme on communicating about repositories of nuclear waste for Swedish Radio “Morning on P1” (8 September 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf discussed the question “Can archaeology do harm in present society?” with a class in Ethical Dilemmas in Contemporary Anthropology taught by Professor Laura McAtackney at University College Cork, Ireland (10 September 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Steven Hartman, Executive Director, UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition, about future collaborations (10 September 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf was interviewed about long-term communication regarding nuclear waste repositories on the national Swedish radio programme “Morning on P1” (22 September 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf was invited to present a talk on “Varför kultur och kulturarv ska tjäna fred och inte krig” for an audience of 60+ civil servants and politicians at a conference on Kultur- och fritidsområdets roll i kris och beredskap in Jönköping, Sweden (23 September).

A Heritage Futures Voice at NY Climate Week

2025-09-29

Marcy Rockman, visiting researcher with the UNESCO Chair for Heritage Futures, spoke in a live-stream hosted by the climate action group We Don’t Have Time from Stockholm to NY Climate Week on September 24, 2025.

The event focused on the dismantling of climate change science in the US and what can be done broadly to rebuild trust and craft new paths of action. It began with Marcy describing the sequence of events that brought her to Sweden. She shared some of her experiences as lead for climate change and cultural heritage with the US National Park Service, a role that was dissolved under the first Trump administration, and then how capacity to do her subsequent work at the intersection of climate, heritage, and policy was decimated under the start of the second Trump term. She then noted her connections with the UNESCO Chair and how their successful application to the Swedish Research Council for a visiting researcher grant. She said, “I had to say no to giving a talk in Sweden and this turned into an opportunity to move to Sweden. I’m beyond heartsick at all that is happening in the US now, I also know I’m deeply lucky to be here.”

Maria Bergkvist, deputy director of Klimatklubben was also part of the event. Klimatklubben is an organization working to bring people together across Sweden to talk about climate change and take action together. Klimatklubben has started a new initiative organized around a study published earlier this year that found that a high percentage (greater than 75%) of people around the world want their governments to take more action in response to climate change, but a much smaller percentage talk about climate change with friends and family.

Although they came be part of the panel from different directions, both Marcy and Maria spoke about the power and importance of bringing people together locally and connecting with each other in a place, and that such gatherings and connections are essential to rebuilding trust and relationships. As well, Marcy found it encouraging that We Don’t Have Time and everyone involved considered research in heritage and the social science underlying the work of Klimatklubben to be essential parts of climate science and climate response.

A recording of the full panel is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/BMu36rxDECo

Meeting of UNESCO Chairs

2025-09-26

On 26 September 2025, I took part in a virtual meeting of the UNESCO Futures Literacy and Foresight Chairs, where the new Head of Section (the Management of Social Transformation Programme, MOST), Irakli Khodeli, and the new Head of Unit of Futures Literacy and Foresight, Clare Stark, presented their new priorities and discussed collaboration with the ca 20 (of a total of 36) Chairs represented in the meeting.

In general terms, the MOST programme aims at bringing the knowledge of the Social Sciences and Humanities to policy-making (which fits perfectly with our aims of the UNESCO Chair on Futures Literacy).

Among the planned and ongoing initiatives of UNESCO where FLF Chairs are expected to be involved are the World Futures Day Celebrations on 2 December 2025, a Signals Report on what lies on the horizon, and the conceptual development of a Flagship Report on Foresight for policy making, as well as a new UNESCO Futures Blog.

This meeting, bringing together 40+ UNESCO staff and UNESCO Chairs from around the work, exemplified multilateralism in action, noted Irakli Khodeli in the end.

Nuclear waste in a cultural perspective

2025-09-20

Claudio Pescatore (affiliated with the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures) and I took part in the 2025 Interdisciplinary Research Symposium on the Safety of Nuclear Disposal Practices (safeND 2025) held by the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management BASE (Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung) in Berlin 16-19 September 2025.

The overall theme was “Time as a safety factor: opportunities and challenges of timely nuclear waste disposal“. It quickly became clear that this focus was inspired by the perceived need to accelerate the decision-making process to identify the site location for Germany’s repository of high-level nuclear waste. But the topics discussed during the symposium were much wider and covered perspectives from many different disciplines bringing up a wide range of issues, not the least the issue of radioactive waste resulting from uranium mining that has not always been formally included into the discussions of nuclear waste. Claudio Pescatore led a workshop on this latter topic, based on his recent research.

One highlight was the keynote lecture by Andrew Stirling, University of Sussex and formally a Board Member of Greenpeace. It turned out he was originally an archaeologist! He also made a powerful argument suggesting that the objective of finding “the best possible” solution for safe nuclear waste disposal, which the German legislation requires, misses the question whether “the best possible” solution can ultimately be satisfactory.

In my talk (in front of cirka 50 participants), I adopted this question asking whether what many think is “the best possible” way to plan for uncertain future needs is ultimately satisfactory. My point was that taking a cultural perspective linked to the capability of futures literacy can get us further…

Nuclear waste disposal is not only about physical time, safety, technology and social and political acceptance but it is also about long-term thinking, embracing cultural change, and human values and identities that are shifting over time.

Holtorf, C.: Sustainability and long-term processes: a cultural perspective, Third interdisciplinary research symposium on the safety of nuclear disposal practices, Berlin, Germany, 17–19 Sep 2025, safeND2025-6, https://doi.org/10.5194/safend2025-6, 2025.

ABSTRACT

Culture is about how people make sense of the world, of each other, and of themselves. It is diverse in scale, across space, and over time. By implication, expertise on the world, its inhabitants, and ourselves is culturally relative. Indeed, culture is often about managing difference: different ideas, different people, different languages.

Applied to the need to sustain a body of knowledge and guidance for action over the long term, a cultural approach will (have to) embrace the need to adapt to cultural changes and developments. All this means that regarding nuclear waste, what we are tasked with today is transferring to future generations, who will be living in their own cultural contexts, knowledge and guidance for action that will make sense to them, not to us. Proposed messages that lack futures literacy merely perpetuate our own frameworks of meaning and eventually become irrelevant and unsustainable. There are thus good reasons why they say that nothing ages faster than the future, and nothing is more difficult to predict than the past. In this paper, I will discuss some implications of this theoretical argument for geological disposal of radioactive waste.

Beyond fear of the future concerning heritage

2025-09-02

I listened today to the keynote lecture by Tatjana Cvjetićanin during the Opening session of the Annual Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2025. She has been the Director of the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade (2003-2012).

In her lecture, Cvjetićanin asked whether archaeological heritage really always provides benefits for the future, whether it is sensible to do archaeological “hoarding” of finds in collections, and why we always have to fear the future for perpetual crises of endangerment of archaeological heritage.

Instead, she referred to the Heritage Futures project (Harrison et al 2020) and emphasized archaeologists’ responsibility to work with the public for the public, described the nature of their work as ‘heritage-making’, and insisted on the temporally and spatially variable value of archaeological heritage.

Very interesting to follow in lectures like this one how heritage futures are gradually becoming mainstream in Archaeology… 🙂

Claudio Pescatore: The Deep-Time Reality of Nuclear Waste

2025-08-21

Claudio Pescatore explains why high-level waste still needs shields—and memory beyond a million years:

When it comes to high-level waste repositories, the old reassurance — “radioactivity falls back close to or below natural levels” — is misleading. Yes, if you total up all the radioactivity in a repository and compare it to the original ore, the sum may look modest after ten to a hundred thousand years, depending on waste type. But people (and animals) don’t meet sums. They meet things: individual containers, cores, and fragments that concentrate radioactivity. What matters—ethically and practically—is the radiation dose at the surface of each piece as time rolls on.

Total radioactivity vs original uranium ore in Swedish spent fuel. (Report SKB-TR-97-13)

A new paper looks squarely at that reality. Rather than only computing dose, a concept for radiation specialists, it asks a tangible question: how thick must a shield be to meet modern radiation protection limit not just now, but at one million years and beyond? Using concrete as the reference, the answer comes in units anyone can picture: roughly 50–90 cm at a million years, depending on the waste and the protection target.

At one million years (and ignoring any container):

  • Spent fuel (SF) requires about 67–93 cm of concrete for a representative multi-ton package
  • Vitrified high-level waste (VHLW) requires about 53–72 cm of concrete for a full-size cylinder.

Beyond one million years, uranium-238 — lasting billions of years — makes the shielding requirement essentially constant: without containers, concrete thicknesses range from 7–42 cm for vitrified-waste cylinders and 62–87 cm for spent fuel.

Smaller isn’t safer. Even drill cores (say, 40 cm tall by 10 cm wide) or fragments still need shielding on the same order, because near-surface dose depends on what’s inside, not the item’s size. At a million years, unshielded drill cores still translate into about 48–67 cm of required concrete for vitrified waste and about 46–72 cm for spent fuel.

Scale matters. Numbers per item are only half the story. Program scale multiplies these requirements: for example, Sweden plans roughly 6,000 spent‑fuel canisters. In France, there will be more than 50,000 vitrified-waste cylinders.

Concrete shielding thickness at one million years for spent fuel (full canister and drill core) and vitrified high-level waste (full cylinder and drill core). Results are shown for two protection targets: 0.02 mSv/h (brief, one-hour exposure) and 0.002 mSv/h (background-like)—ballpark in the absence of project-specific requirements

What this means in human terms

  • Heritage, not waste alone. If descendants encounter these materials—by curiosity, drilling, erosion, or chance—they won’t face a vanishing hazard but an enduring one, beyond legal timeframes and planning horizons. Our commitment to protect future people “to levels comparable to today” becomes concrete—literally—in centimeters of real shielding.
  • Justice and foresight. Thinking “per item” reframes responsibility. Are we designing containers—and contingencies—that keep each piece safe, including broken pieces? The ambition is that we should.
  • Design humility. Landscapes move; encounters may occur. The ethical stance is not to promise a perfect fortress forever, but to equip future people with buffers that still work: robust, intelligible, possibly maintainable shields—and the memory provisions (institutional handovers, markers, archives,  time capsules) to keep that knowledge alive. Also, acknowledge that these wastes never become harmless.

 So what now?

  1. Build for fragments. Don’t just model intact packages; assume cores, partial breaches, and erosion-revealed segments—and assign them shielding, too.
  2. Specify the long-lived drivers. Make a standard reporting of the deep-time isotopic loadings, because they determine both the danger and the shield.
  3. Design the message with the material. If safety demands 50–90 cm at a million years, our markings and archives should be designed to last—and be rediscoverable—on comparable horizons. Or that should be the ambition.
  4. Expand the lens. Apply similar analyses to other long-lived wastes that carry significant uranium-238 loadings.

Takeaway: this isn’t a new fear; it’s a clearer ethic. We owe the future not only sealed vaults and clever signs, but credible buffers—thicknesses you can measure with a ruler—matched to how matter behaves over time.  The shield is not a metaphor; it’s a promise we can make, and keep.

Further reading

Claudio Pescatore, Beyond a million years: Robust radiation shielding for high-level waste Nukleonika, 70(3): 87-93.

https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/nuka-2025-0009 (open access)

Claudio Pescatore
Claudio Pescatore is a member of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University

Archaeology of Garbage

2025-08-01

A new interview published in Brazil featuring the Chair’s affiliated researcher Dr Leila Papoli-Yazdi tells the significance of the archaeology of garbage, not the least for the future:

By connecting her research to the idea that archaeology can “build futures”, Leila reveals the potential of garbology as an interdisciplinary and transformative practice that illuminates not only the past but also the challenges of the present and the possibilities for a more just and sustainable future.

Full reference:

Papoli-Yazdi, Leila, Tiago Silva Alves Muniz, Camilla Agostini (2025) Archaeology of garbage: from disaster archaeology to social entrepreneurship. Vestígios – Revista Latino-Americana De Arqueologia Histórica, 19(2), 317-326. https://doi.org/10.31239/j677sr71

This interview explores Professor Leila’s pioneering work in the archaeology of garbage, tracing her journey from disaster archaeology in Iran to the establishment of Europe’s first start-up focused on garbology. Initially working in Tehran, Leila faced challenges linked to Iran’s political climate and the adaptation of traditional garbological methods to urban environments. Upon moving to Scandinavia, she encountered new professional and cultural dynamics, eventually co-founding Garbonomix – a company dedicated to analyzing consumption habits to support economic resilience. She discusses the interdisciplinary potential of garbology to improve both individual and community well-being, linking academic insights with practical applications. Furthermore, Leila reflects on the stigmatization of contemporary material studies in archaeology, noting the field’s often nationalistic orientation that overlooks recent histories. Her work advocates for a more inclusive, human-centered archaeology that addresses modern issues like poverty and environmental sustainability. Through her engagement with both academic and consulting roles, Leila demonstrates how archaeology can extend beyond traditional frameworks, encouraging practitioners to collaborate with marginalized communities and contribute to social resilience.

Various activities April – June 2025

2025-07-01

Cornelius Holtorf attended the Webinar “Archaeological Cultural Heritage in the UNESCO Mandate” organized by the Polish National Commission for UNESCO, the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies and the University of Poznan (4 April 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf contributed to the consultation of the Swedish Commission for UNESCO concerning Sweden’s future collaboration with UNESCO (24 April 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf, gave an invited talk on “The Climate Heritage Paradox” for ca 90 participants in the national conference Heritage Horizons: Pathways to the Future by the Heritage Council of Ireland, held in Dublin, Ireland (1 May 2025).

Anders Högberg presented the research programme InKuiS – Innovative Cultural Entrepreneurship in Collaborative Co-creative Research, including the future-related project Earth Logic Design, at a conference organised by the Småland in Academy organised at Linnaeus University in Växjö (16 May 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in a webinar of the “The Path to MONDIACULT 2025” series which is part of the preparations for MONDIACULT 2025, the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (19 May 2025). The 2025 edition of MONDIACULT in Barcelona will be pivotal in ensuring that culture is recognized as a standalone goal in the future United Nations development strategy.

Cornelius Holtorf contributed to a Consultation of the Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA) on the UNFCCC process to develop indicators for measuring progress in adapting heritage sites and cultural practices to climate change (30 May 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf attended digitally a High level panel on future generations entitled “A Tribunal for Future Generations” held at the Hamburg Sustainability Conference 2025 and involving, among others, Guy Ryder (Under-Secretary-General, UN Executive Office) and Sophie Howe (The World’s first Future Generations Commissioner, for Wales) (2 June 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg held an informal meeting on heritage processes and futures literacy with Dr Anselm Tiggemann of the BGE Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung in Berlin to discuss future collaborations (9 June 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf attended digitally parts of The International Seminar on Heritage Interpretation and Presentation for Future Generations co-organized by the Institute of International Studies at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan; the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites, and the Our World Heritage initiative (14 June 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf ran a Future Workshop on “World heritage Southern Öland 25 years in the future” for 20+ students taking part in a course entitled “The World Heritage site of Southern Öland” at Ölands Folkhögskola, Skogsby, Öland, Sweden (18 June 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf arranged and participated in an exploratory meeting for future collaboration with Professor Tatsuyoshi Saijo, Kyoto University of Advanced Science (who has been developing Future Design) and Christine Kavazanjian, UNESCO Paris (representing UNESCO’s unit on Foresight and Futures Literacy), (19 June 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in a meeting of the External Advisory Committee of the Flagship Initiative Transforming Cultural Heritage at the University of Heidelberg, Germany (20 June 2025).