UNESCO

How can cultural heritage sites contribute to the world’s common future?

2026-10-23

The following text represents my spoken introduction to the panel discussion on the question “How cultural heritage sites can contribute to the world’s common future?”, held on 20 October 2026 at the Scientific Symposium “Living Heritage”, on the occasion of the 2026 General Assembly of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in Kuching, Malaysia.

x x x

The 2024 UN Pact for the Future together with its Appendices pledges “a new beginning in multilateralism” and sets out an ambitious agenda for the world’s common future, reaffirming an enduring commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development while committing to culture as an integral component of sustainable development.

Cultural heritage is mentioned explicitly on two occasions. The Heads of the World’s States and Governments, representing the peoples of the world, “condemn in the strongest terms the devastating impact of armed conflict on … cultural heritage,” and they pledge to “honour, promote and preserve cultural diversity and cultural heritage.”

The rest of the 64-pages long document outlines many different actions in the areas of
– sustainable development and financing for development,
– international peace and security,
– science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation,
– youth and future generations, and
– transforming global governance.

Their shared goal is “to protect the needs and interests of present and future generations” by making the international system more inclusive, effective and fit for 21st-century challenges.

We have heard many times about the need to preserve or safeguard the cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations. But what exactly does that mean? Which future generations? Which future benefits?

Some of you will recall how Lynn Meskell reminded us in Sydney three years ago of the poor track record of World Heritage inscriptions for communities. On average, the UNESCO listing process, she argued, engenders more conflict, not more cooperation. Cultural heritage can entrench inequality, fuel conflict and violence, and disenfranchise local communities.

The present panel discussion brings together global experts to discuss together (and with you, the audience) how ICOMOS and cultural heritage sites can respond effectively to current and future challenges and thus contribute “to ensure the future we want.”

The future is uncertain, and what the future will hold for heritage and uses of the past is not self-evident. After all, they say that nothing ages faster than our view of the future—but also that nothing is more difficult to predict than our view of the past.

Much regarding our joint future will indeed depend on the decisions we are making in the world of today.
In this panel, we will hear, I hope, a wide range of contributions on how culture and heritage can contribute to addressing global future challenges and seizing emerging opportunities, in the context of multilateral collaboration.

Given that the next GA 2029 will likely be held in close proximity to the expiry and possible replacement of the Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, now is the time to discuss jointly the potential of cultural heritage sites and landscapes to contribute to the world’s future agenda from 2030 onwards.

The Pact for the Future stated that culture should be “an integrated component” of sustainable development (and there already is a first draft of a Culture Goal prepared by the Culture2030Goal campaign). Recently, the UN General Assembly agreed on an International Decade of Culture for Sustainable Development, to be led by UNESCO 2027-2036.

But, as Marek Tamm asked, “How do we make sense of the past [and of heritage] in a world where the future is not what it used to be?” How could ICOMOS through its work respond to emerging future realities, including climate change, generative AI, digital and other inequalities, threats to human rights, violent conflicts and wars, as well as other transformations?

In a recent paper on cultural heritage and the climate crisis, I pointed to a Climate Heritage Paradox:

1. Whereas the future requires us to find global solutions and to promote pan-human solidarity, – heritage is commonly about appreciating cultural distinction and diversity (often in term of us and them).

2. Whereas the future is about change and requires the transformation of society and many people’s livelihoods, – heritage is often about continuity, conservation, and timeless values. In his excellent keynote lecture yesterday, Zaki Aslan talked about ‘adaptive continuity’ of heritage in the Anthropocene. Maybe we could change the order and talk about a need for ‘continuous adaptation’ and constant transformation of heritage in our age.

Currently, it seems that the past, the present and the future are not perfectly aligned. So I would like to pose the question to what extent cultural heritage should (or even could) be different in the future.

To get our panel discussion going, I am entertaining the possibility that cultural heritage could play slightly new roles in contributing to the world’s common future and helping us “ensure the future we want”.

1. The 2024 UN Pact for the Future highlighted the importance of long-term thinking in addressing global challenges. ICOMOS is uniquely positioned to advance this agenda. Tangible sites and monuments offer rich resources for understanding long-term societal change and promoting intergenerational justice beyond short-term economics and politics.

2. Culture shapes how people make sense of the world and relate to one another. Greater attention to what unites human beings across cultures, histories, and regions may affect mindsets by fostering mutual understanding and strengthen peace and global cohesion for the benefit of people living now and in the future.

3. Cultural heritage is not only something to be safeguarded against identified threats; it can also be a catalyst for desirable positive change and transformation. Perceiving heritage as a dynamic field reflecting past and present people’s choices and their consequences, can inform our own choices for wellbeing in the future.

4. UNESCO emerged from intellectual traditions grounded in humanism and cooperation between peoples. Today, all of humanity faces planetary challenges associated with environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and a changing climate affecting human and non-human life. Cultural heritage could advance timely reflections on human–environment relations (also critical ones!) and inform discussions of the significance of post-human thinking in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Respect may have to be given even to non-human entities such as trees or rivers.

Cultural heritage does not matter today primarily because some items are threatened and must be saved; but because those remaining can help us shape a more sustainable future on Earth. Across time and place, heritage has helped people locate themselves within larger narratives. As part of culture, it provides meaning and offers context to how we live, think and relate to one another.

In doing so, cultural heritage can play a surprisingly powerful role: it can build hope, solidarity and trust within communities, across borders and indeed between generations.

With those thoughts I am now turning to my panel members and invite them to their own opening statements.

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

PS Nothing I said in this introduction necessarily reflects the views of UNESCO but only my own. See also my text here.

The Future is a Foreign Country

2026-10-16

Anna Marlene Karlsson defended a very interesting PhD thesis a year ago at the University of Bergen in Norway. The title: «The Future is a Foreign Country: The Presence of the Future in Contemporary Norwegian Cultural Heritage Policies and Practices».

ABSTRACT:

This thesis explores the role of the future in the Norwegian heritage sector. While cultural heritage preservation is often framed through an intergenerational perspective – as a duty towards both past and future generations – there is a lack of knowledge about the impact different ways of thinking about the future have on cultural heritage policies and practices.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the values, assumptions, and narratives that underpin future-oriented thinking in the Norwegian heritage sector. Using a discourse perspective and the method of logics of critical explanation, the thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of national white papers from the Ministry of Climate and Environment, strategy documents and reports from the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, as well as a qualitative survey among members of local historical organisations.

The study identifies how future thinking impacts the heritage sector, but also how current understandings of the functions and values of cultural heritage informs what actions are perceived as possible. It demonstrates how notions of continuity, responsibility, uncertainty, and change structure and influence preservation policies and strategies. The thesis observes that while the future is often implicitly invoked to legitimise preservation practices, there are potential conflicts between long-term goals and short-term policy aims. A failure to recognise this can limit the ability of the sector to respond to the challenges of climate change, social transformation, and future uncertainty in a flexible and productive way. A comparison with volunteer perspectives reveals a larger focus on personal and local aspects of heritage preservation and management, while at the same time sharing some of the underpinning logics and assumptions about cultural heritage with the official heritage management.

The thesis contributes to important debates about the ethical and political aspects of future-directed heritage preservation and management in facing current challenges. It calls for more explicit, reflective, and pluralistic future thinking within the heritage sector, which the thesis demonstrates is often hindered by prevailing notions of cultural heritage as representing coherence, stability, and continuity.

A Fossil Discovered in an Iron Age Excavation by archaeology students in Löt, Öland

2026-10-02

By Nur Esin Karaosman, Visiting PhD student at the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, Linnaeus University

During an archaeological excavation in Löt, Öland, conducted as part of a large research project on ringforts on Öland and of Linnaeus University’s archaeology program, what may be the oldest find of the excavation was brought to the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures.

It was found on 17 September 2026, during a conversation among the students about how to distinguish a fossil from “just-a-stone”. Helena Deller, a Master’s student in archaeology, noticed the fossil and, just before removing it from the trench, showed it to Esin Karaosman, a visiting doctoral student at the Chair who was taking part in the excavation that day.

It was important enough for Esin to keep, but not important enough to be archived as part of the Iron Age excavation. The find has been documented at the Chair, where the investigation continues.

Fig.1: The documentation of the find, including its speculative future. (Photograph by Esin Karaosman.)

It is very possible that the find was already here when the Iron Age settlement was inhabited. Esin considers the find an important object for archaeological practice. “Perhaps someone living here in this Iron Age house picked it up too, because it reminded them of something,” she says. “Then we would be looking at the same stone or the same fossil, only making sense of it in different ways today.”

Whether or not the fossil was a part of the history of the site, therefore the past human lives, it has already become an archaeological find.

A conversation with a geologist at Linnaeus University, Christopher Allen, confirmed that it is a fossil. The find holds the traces of an animal that was once alive in the same place, but in a sea that covered Öland 450 million years ago.

Esin recalls a quote from Cornelius Holtorf which he said at another Iron Age site nearby, on 12 September at around 3.19 pm: “We are looking at the same sky as people in the Iron Age, sitting in the same place. We will probably look at the same sky, also in the future.” The fossil, too, will be looked at again, and its story will continue to unfold in the future.

Fig.2: The re-enactment of the moment when the fossil became an archaeological find. (Photograph by Esin Karaosman.)

The find is already evidence of a life that reaches far beyond the site’s Iron Age. It is also the evidence of the very recent past: of archaeological sensibility and of students being trained how to see; of the class that took place that day; and of the conversation between Helena and Esin about what counts as evidence for the story of a site.

Not only these stories change the life of the find, but also the finds and their stories change how the site will be remembered, known and imagined. Having escaped the Iron Age archive, the find continues its travels and transformations. (1)

Note: This article is inspired by the following article: Holtorf, C. 2006. “A silver ring discovered by Swedish archaeologists in Portugal.” World Archaeological Congress eNewsletter no. 12, and The European Archaeologist no. 26, 16.

(1) This endnote is left for the texts that will change the enduring life of the artifact, and of the site.

Various activities July – September 2026

2026-10-01

Cornelius Holtorf was among nearly 300 attendants of the UNESCO Futures Dialogues on ‘African Knowledge and Governance Systems for a Culture of Peace’ organized in the lead-up to the 4th edition of the Biennale of Luanda – the Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace in Africa (8 July 2026). In his introduction, Mohamed Elfarnawany (UNESCO) reminded the audience of the significance of the minds of people for peacebuilding because it is in the minds that people’s attitudes, behaviour and values are shaped. He suggested that the world needs African intellectual leadership in this area. George Ladaah Openjuru, Vice Chancellor of Gulu University in Uganda, pointed to the significance of the African ‘land-based’, indigenous knowledge system and Ubuntu, advocating a shift from ego to eco, i.e. promoting harmony with the environment and respect for people and nature to advance cultural peace. Others in the audience pointed to the fact that Africa consists of 54 countries, each with a plethora of tribes and languages, and unique forms of governance.

Cornelius Holtorf attended a regular online seminar of the Long-Term Governance Network, chaired by Sophie Howe (17 July 2026). Among the presenters were Manuel Castañón, President of the Foundation for the Protection and Defence of Future Generations, and Daouia Chalali who leads a project on long-term governance at the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research.

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the Inauguration of the Linnaeus Garden at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden, and served cheese cookies with wild oregano grown in soil at the Iron Age site of Gamla Skogsby (18 August 2026). Marcy Rockman, Gustav Wollentz and Emily Hanscam attended too.

Cornelius Holtorf gave a short talk on UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage and Swedish peace culture for more than 200 participants of the Peace & Climate Festival, arranged in Mellstabylund on Öland, Sweden, by the local Cultural Association “Karneval” (22 August 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in an internal meeting with the Vice-Chancellor and other senior administrators and senior researchers discussing the future potential of Linnaeus University as a hub in UNESCO MOST-BRIDGES (27 August 2026).

Anders Högberg, Gustav Wollentz, and Cornelius Holtorf, among many others, took actively part in a 2-day workshop in Sigtuna, Sweden, organised by the Swedish National Heritage Board in connection with their project on Sustainable Cultural Heritage (27-28 August 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf, Marcy Rockman, Emily Hanscam, and Gustav Wollentz, took part in the second workshop of the internally-funded interdisciplinary Hope-making project in which they collaborate with colleagues in English Literature, and artists. The two days hosted by the artist collective Kultivator in Dyestad on Öland was dedicated to preparing a future project involving not only archaeologists and literature scholars but also biologists, artists, and various non-human species. The days featured even some collaborative ditch digging and was in parts attended by some horses and a few dogs and cats (2-3 September 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf attended “Day Break”, an event facilitating meetings between 100 investors, entrepreneurs, and innovators from Linnaeus University, held at Vida Art Museum, Öland, Sweden (4 September 2026). Among those inspiring us was Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame and also holding an Honorary Doctorate from our University.

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting about future collaboration with Johanna Blokker, Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies at the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany (10 September 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf attended a digital seminar of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage on the topic of “Protecting Lunar Heritage: Developing Guidelines and Recommendations for Controlled Lunar Deorbiting” (14 September 2026) and engaged subsequently in correspondence with Bryan Lintott, the Committee’s Secretary-General, concerning questions of emphasis and strategy.

Cornelius Holtorf completed the Member Survey of the ICOMOS International Committee on Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP) responding to proposals for the planned Revision of the 2008 ICOMOS Charter for Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (16 September 2026).

Gustav Wollentz and Anders Högberg held a futures workshop in Malmö, Sweden, for 8 professionals in the cultural heritage sector in southern Sweden. The purpose was to inform the ongoing study on the sector’s future research needs in relation to social sustainability (22 September 2026).

Gustav Wollentz and Cornelius Holtorf held a futures workshop in Göteborg, Sweden, for 11 professionals in the cultural heritage sector in western Sweden. The purpose was to inform the ongoing study on the sector’s future research needs in relation to social sustainability (24 September 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf attended the European Heritage Hub’s online Policy Talk on how cultural heritage should fit into future European AI policies, featuring presentations by Hermann Parzinger, Executive President of Europa Nostra, Georg Häusler, Director of Culture, Creativity and Sport in the European Commission, and Mariya Gabriel, Assistant Director General for Communication and Information at UNESCO, among others (29 September 2026). The occasion was the publication of a new policy paper entitled “Beyond adopter and supplier: putting cultural heritage at the heart of Europe’s Public AI ecosystem,” emphasizing the needs to innovate in Europe, to protect cultural diversity and heritage in Europe, and to empower creators and people in Europe through the development of Public AI.

Heritage Futures@Aarhus

2026-09-22

A new research programme dedicated to Heritage Futures has been launched at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. As the researchers explain,

“We are interested in how heritage can shape the present and future. Mostly people think of heritage as something that ‘has been’, something in the past, but heritage is produced in the present and shapes the future. (…)

One of the debates that we want to engage is the emerging conversation around Heritage-based Solutions (HbS) to global challenges, like the climate emergency and social and economic inequality. For us, heritage is an important route towards social justice, hence the theme for the first year of the research programme is ‘Decolonial Futures’ in which we engage with difficult and contested questions of coloniality and its shaping effects in Denmark and more broadly. (…) In the second year we will explore the subject of utopia/dystopia. (…)

The emerging debate around Heritage-based Solutions understands heritage as a ‘solutions archive’ that we can draw on to address contemporary challenges. We are an ingenious species, and we have faced many challenges in the past, including the challenge of rapidly transforming climatic conditions. (…) In this moment of crisis, it makes sense to draw on the archive of heritage to find solutions and inspiration.

Good luck with your work!

Bye Bye Bryggen!

2026-09-20

I have been listening to a very interesting audiowalk through Bergen’s World Heritage Site of Bryggen and the city’s climate future. The title is Bye Bye Bryggen.

The audioguide was produced by Umami Productions and they describe the task as follows (automated translation of the Norwegian original):

The World Heritage Site of Bryggen is located right by the water in Bergen, Europe’s rainiest city. What will happen to the World Heritage Site in the future is an open question, given that the problems caused by flooding and storm surges will become increasingly severe as the years go by. In Bergen, intensive work is underway to assess the future in order to make informed decisions about how infrastructure needs to change. However, the primary language of climate research is numbers and graphs—and it can be difficult to understand their real implications, even for experts working with future analyses.

To solve the task at hand, Umami wrote two stories based on very different scenarios. They describe the underlying key ideas as follows:

Bye Bye Bryggen is a fictional story about the lives of two siblings. They are born in the early 2020s and experience the great storm that hits Bryggen in 2072. Almost thirty years later, one of the siblings’ grandchildren is given a school assignment: go home and interview your relatives about something that has happened in their lives. Tonje, the granddaughter, has always wondered what really happened during the storm. The only thing she knows is that her grandfather, her mother, and her grandfather’s sister were at Bryggen when the storm struck, where the family had a shop. And that her grandfather and his sister have not spoken to each other since then.

Bye Bye Bryggen is based on the idea that all our decisions—both major political decisions and the small decisions we make in our everyday lives—affect the future. This is what we explore through the story of the siblings. Their private conflict mirrors larger conflicts in the society in which they live. The concept allows you to choose between two different futures. One takes place in a world where major conflicts have been resolved through various forms of agreement. The other is a future in which the conflicts remain unresolved. The idea is that the different versions will stimulate conversations about what kind of future we want, what we are prepared to sacrifice, and which values matter when we are forced to compromise because of climate change.

The project may be called Applied Heritage Futures: set in 2100, it makes audiences think about the role of cultural heritage in managing the relations between present and future societies. This is clearly expressed at the very end of the audioguide when the narrator gives this advice:

“Remember, there are endless possible futures, and whatever future may come, we create it together.”

You can listen to the two versions of the audioguide through The World Heritage of Bryggen at Bergen by downloading the Climaginaries app for free. Highly recommended!

New Film: Dialogues in Learning

2026-09-17

“Given the state of the world today, the many crises that we face …we need to be talking about existential things, if you like. And we need to talk about existential things in ways that become relatable in everyday terms. And heritage gives us the language to do that.” (Nick Shepherd, Aarhus University)

“Over the past two days we’ve very much been focusing on what it means to be a human and be a researcher at the same time. So it’s about bringing our personal experiences into conversations of heritage and climate change. And I think that is something I will definitely take back with me.” (Hana Morel, Historic England).

The workshop Climate, Heritage, and Policy: Dialogues in Learning held 27-29 May 2026 at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden (Kalmar Dialogues) brought together the vast scope and urgency of climate change with ideas and activities that engaged participants in learning and collaborating as their whole human selves. Twenty researchers and practitioners in heritage and climate from across Sweden and from Norway, Denmark, the UK, and France used art, local exploration, the practice of dialogue, and many different conversations with each other to find new ways to talk about what is changing in environments around us and how we are experiencing and taking in these changes – and from all this, what new things we can see to do together next.

In this short film about the workshop, it is possible to see not only what participants did, but hear in their own words how this approach gave them new perspectives and energy for the work they do. Watch here.

This workshop was a project of the UNESCO Chair for Heritage Futures, led by Marcy Rockman with support of Cornelius Holtorf and funding from the Swedish Research Council and developed in collaboration with and moderated by Creative Futures. A full report on this workshop also has been prepared and is available here.

New Report: Dialogues in Learning

How do you learn an environment you don’t know? How do you see and understand change in an environment that you do know? And what do you do with this understanding – how do you act with it and how do you share it?

These questions were the foundation of the workshop Climate, Heritage, and Policy: Dialogues in Learning held 27-29 May 2026 at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden. It recognized that new environments have always challenged us to learn them. Now the many environments in which we live are changing rapidly. These include our physical environments of course, but also our social, cultural, economic, and technological environments. Which raises the question – how are we learning them? Twenty researchers and practitioners in heritage and climate change from across Sweden and from Norway, Denmark, the UK, and France used a framework of learning and dialogue to look beyond what is changing in our many environments to explore how we gather, manage, store, use, and share our experiences of these changes.

This workshop was a project of the UNESCO Chair for Heritage Futures, led by Marcy Rockman with support of Cornelius Holtorf, funding from the Swedish Research Council, and developed in collaboration with and moderated by Creative Futures. A report on this workshop is now complete and shared below.

Key findings include:

People matter: personal experience and identity are integral to professional practice and shape questions that are asked and how climate and heritage work are done.
Dialogue and play are underused but high-value tools for both collaboration and public engagement; participants ranked dialogic practice as the single most valuable skill to carry forward.
Collaboration was the most-requested resource (ahead of time or funding), signaling strong appetite for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional partnerships.
Landscape learning proved a useful lens for reframing climate change from a focus on measurements and damage to processes of adaptation and knowledge-building, and policy as a repository of environmental information everyone has a stake in updating.
Cultural heritage is an asset to responses to climate change — the many ways in which cultural heritage is approached, shared, and engaged are essential tools for advancing climate justice, beyond and in addition to what should be protected from climate impacts.

This Kalmar Dialogues workshop has already catalyzed new collaborations, including a peace-building grant proposal centered on the Struve Geodetic Arc, an invitation to join Sweden’s National Heritage Board climate expert group, and new museum-practice exchanges. This report recommends further developing dialogic skills as part of the program of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, and continuing to build a community of practice around the truth & reconciliation and landscape learning frameworks.

The outcomes of this workshop demonstrate that integrating climate change, cultural heritage, and policy needs more than data — it requires shared frameworks, dialogue, and trust-building across disciplines. This workshop offers an initial, replicable model for this work, with strong participant enthusiasm to extend it further.

The Climate, Heritage, and Policy: Dialogues in Learning Report is available here.

Heritage Futures: Learning from Nature

2026-09-16

by Claudio Pescatore

Heritage is often imagined as something we preserve for the future: we identify what matters, protect it from change, and hope it survives long enough for others to encounter it. That is the popular picture, at least.

But Nature suggests another way of thinking about continuity — and it may deserve a place in that conversation.

A soil, a sediment layer or a peat deposit can act as an environmental archive. It records traces of what has happened, yet it never stays untouched.

Material is deposited, transformed, mixed, eroded and redistributed; radioactive substances decay; new ones are formed.

The archive changes continuously — and still it keeps information about the past.

This made me wonder: could it be a useful way of thinking about heritage?

Nature does not preserve by standing still

My recent work concerns a rather obscure radioactive isotope, lead-210 (²¹⁰Pb), which environmental scientists use to study atmospheric fallout and to date relatively recent sediments, soils and peat.

The interesting point for me was not the isotope itself but the idea of the environment as an archive.

The ²¹⁰Pb record is not a document filed away intact. It is produced by natural processes that never stop: material arrives, radionuclides transform, sediments shift, and the record that results has to be read and interpreted.

A sediment layer need not stay identical to its original state to tell us something about its history. In other words, the archive stays useful not despite change but through it.

The real question may be less whether something stays exactly as it was, and more whether, as it changes, it still holds on to a pointer to what came before.

This is not a new thought in heritage studies.

Cornelius Holtorf has argued for years that heritage strengthens cultural resilience precisely by helping us accept loss and transformation rather than resist them, and more recently that conservation itself can be understood as regeneration — ever changing, never less than whole. What the environmental sciences add is a very concrete example of the same idea.

Schematic: excess ²¹⁰Pb decays with depth while the ¹³⁷Cs peak fixes 1963 — a record that keeps time while never ceasing to change. (Illustration by the author)

What about human traces?

The uranium-mining landscapes that prompted my study make this more interesting still.

Mining leaves behind long-lived material: tailings, waste rock, stockpiles, open workings and other residues. These keep interacting with air, water, soil, plants and sediments long after the mining itself has stopped. Uranium mines also release radon gas, which travels in the air and, in turn, generates ²¹⁰Pb.

This raised a specific worry. Most of the ²¹⁰Pb in soils and sediments comes from radon gas emanating naturally out of the ground; the steady amount that settles each year is what lets scientists read the record, rather as one reads tree rings. Could that extra radon from uranium mines add enough ²¹⁰Pb to distort the record?

For documented mine sizes, the answer is largely reassuring: the added radon is far too little to shift regional ²¹⁰Pb levels in any measurable way. Close to a site the picture can differ, and there it is dust and eroded material that could disturb the record.

What I find more intriguing is what the question reveals.

Human activity does not only leave heritage objects behind. It also leaves materials that enter the ongoing processes of nature.

The landscape itself can become part of the recording mechanism.

What this really describes is archaeology — an archaeology that faces the other way. The archaeologist reads a record already deposited; here the record is still being laid down, as heritage or as mining residue, and the question is how some later present will read it.

Memory without stasis

This brings me close to an idea that seems important for heritage:

that keeping memory is about more than keeping things unchanged.

Something can change a great deal and still work as a memory, so long as it keeps some capacity to point beyond itself — to an event, a place, an action, a history.

The pointer may itself change. What matters is that the relationship holds.

Nature offers no end of examples. A landscape can be transformed and still carry traces of earlier uses. Sediments can be disturbed and still preserve a chronology. Material can move, decay and recombine while some trace stays legible.

The archive, in this sense, is not a container. It is a process.

Learning from Nature

The heritage sector will recognise all this; it has been working in this direction for some time. What Nature offers is a reminder of how ordinary the principle really is. It invites a small shift of emphasis — from asking only:

How do we preserve this for future generations?

to also asking:

How might this change through time and still point back — remaining a past that some future can still read?

That is a different kind of responsibility. It does not mean giving up on preservation, nor assuming that every trace will survive.

It means only that continuity and sameness are not the same thing.

Nature does not keep its records by stopping time. It keeps them while time is passing — and culture, in its own way, does much the same.

That is less a lesson Nature teaches heritage than a resemblance worth sitting with: good company, perhaps, for a field already moving this way.

Nordic World Heritage Conference

2026-09-15

Cornelius Holtorf and Gustav Wollentz were invited speakers at the Nordic World Heritage Conference 2026 attended by about 200 World Heritage managers and policy-makers from all the Nordic countries and held in Karlskrona and on Öland (15-16 October 2026). The theme was “World Heritage and Sustainable Development.”

The conference was officially opened by H.R.H. Prince Carl-Phillip.

Cornelius Holtorf presented a keynote entitled “World Heritage in a Post-2030 Agenda”. He explored the ongoing international dialogue around a post-2030 agenda and its implications for World Heritage. The session highlighted how heritage can relate to future frameworks for sustainable development.

Gustav Wollentz talked about “The value in futures thinking for World Heritage”. He reflected on how future perspectives can—and should—be integrated into World Heritage work.

The meeting also provided an opportunity for meetings with colleagues from near and far. Here, from left to right: Elene Negussie (World Heritage Coordinator, Swedish National Heritage Board), Maria Wilenius (Secretary General, Swedish UNESCO Commission, and Cornelius Holtorf).

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