Losing well: Heritage, climate risk, and adaptation

Join host Phil Emonson as he sits down with Kate Guest, Senior Policy Advisor for Climate Change at Historic England, to explore the powerful intersection of heritage and climate adaptation.

How can the stories embedded in our historic places help people better understand climate risk? Kate shares how Historic England is using culture and community narratives to engage the public in the urgent challenges facing our built heritage - from coastal erosion to extreme weather.

The conversation dives into the difficult idea of “losing well” when preservation is no longer possible and unpacks key adaptation concepts like adaptive release and adaptation pathways. With real-world examples, this episode highlights what it means to make thoughtful, forward-looking decisions about the future of historic assets.

Whether you work in climate policy, heritage, infrastructure, or simply care about protecting the places that shape our identity, this episode offers a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on resilience in a changing world.

Thank you for listening to this episode. 

For any comments, questions or insights please contact phil.emonson@jbaconsulting.com.

Visit our website jbaconsulting.com
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting. I'm Phil Emonson, and in this podcast series we unpick some of the complexities, challenges, and opportunities on the topic of climate resilience with some inspirational thought leaders. Whether you're working on local adaptation projects, planning for climate risk, or simply looking for hope backed by science, you're in the right place. If you enjoy these conversations, be sure to follow the podcast and subscribe wherever you listen. Share with your friends and colleagues too anyone interested in building a more resilient future. Now, let's jump into today's episode. Joining me today is Kate Guest, the Senior Policy Advisor for Climate Change at Historic England. Historic England is the public body that looks after England's historic environment. They champion historic places to help people understand, value, and care for them. And they help to deliver schemes that bring buildings into use, tell the stories of communities and their spaces, and restore pride in local heritage. So we're going to have a great conversation today. And I'm Kate, I'm delighted to have you on the podcast. So welcome. Maybe you could start by introducing yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Phil. I'm really happy to be joining you today on the podcast. So I'm Kate Guest. As Phil says, I'm a senior policy advisor for climate change at Historic England, and I've been at the organisation for the past 14 years, which was quite concerning when I calculated it. I've been in various roles in what is now called the policy development team at Historic England. And essentially, we work with colleagues and external partners to first of all develop our own policies and thinking internally and also to engage with national and local policy making. We work across a large number of areas from planning and listing to local government, devolution, and communities. And in the policy cluster that I sit in, which is environmental management, we focus on rural, marine, and climate change issues and how they relate to the historic environment. So we have a hugely varied role from advising government on potential changes to legislation and policy to ensure that national and local policies take heritage into account and to developing our own guidance for local authorities, planners and asset owners. And excitingly, we also carry out research and build the evidence base for different elements of heritage protection and management. So my role, for example, focuses on understanding climate change risks to heritage assets over the long term and also on how we can adapt and increase the resilience of heritage assets to climate change impacts. So for the past sort of 18 months or so, my main focus has been on building the evidence base and submitting that to the Climate Change Committee as they develop the fourth UK climate change risk assessment. Climate change risks to cultural heritage are included in the climate change risk assessment. So we've been working with other organisations to kind of ensure that we've got the evidence to support the inclusion of risks across the whole range of heritage assets from the built environment to archaeology, protected wrecks and marine heritage, parks, gardens, landscapes, and also to living heritage or intangible heritage. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Well, look, there's so much to go at today. It's going to be a great episode. Now, look, Kate, this is episode 26 of the podcast. And I think it's safe to say that in every episode we have talked about uh engagement. Okay. It's like the it's the theme that we just can't sort of get away from, but that's because engagement is so important to building uh resilient places, resilient people, resilient communities. And in fact, our last episode was with David Porter, who's the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. And one of his presidential themes was communicating better the value of infrastructure. So we had a real deep dive into that. So I suppose I'm interested to start with engagement and communication and interested in how historic England then use our heritage and our and our culture and the stories of communities as a way to engage public in the risks that our historic buildings and assets face from a changing climate?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, it's a great question. As you say, it's something that I'm sure comes up all the time. And I think it's something that we could actually do a bit more of within historic England, but also as the as the heritage sector. But we are sort of increasingly seeing heritage as just that, a sort of a powerful tool to engage communities who care for and about their local assets, not just with the risks to that, you know, that their cultural heritage, but also to highlight climate change and its impacts more broadly on our society and culture. Um something that I was really interested in came out a few months ago from Climate Outreach. And they produced some research showing that the British public do want to see more climate and environmental content from cultural organisations across the board, from you know our news to arts and cultural organizations, um theatres and so on. Um I think the the most powerful message for me from that was that people don't need us to have all the answers in order to engage with them. And I think sometimes, not just within the heritage sector, but with any sector, you can feel a bit nervous in kind of going out and talking to the public and to the people who care for, in our cases, heritage assets, um, when you're not really sure necessarily what's going to happen over the long term because of the inherent uncertainty with climate change. Um but I think we we should definitely be in increasing that because heritage is is everywhere. You know, it's it's our it's our homes, it's our workplaces, it's our parks and gardens, you know, our landscapes. And so it can definitely be a really powerful way to engage people and help them make sense of really big issues like climate change. Um, I think cultural heritage can be a powerful source of information about how people have responded to environmental change in the past as well, um and how people adapt to different climates globally. So it can also be a good source of practical information as well as kind of um uh what's the word, harnessing that power of storytelling and that heritage can can really get across. Um I've got a really good example of this in that a community came together um a couple of years ago to protect um a much-loved heritage asset, which is the Bude Storm Tower in uh Cornwall. Um, the Bud Storm Tower is a grade two listed structure that was built in I think the 1830s on some cliffs above Summerlees Beach, and it's a very sort of iconic feature of that coastline. Um and it's already been moved once due to coastal erosion. It sits on a very dynamic part of the coast, and so it was moved in the 1880s, and it's about 50 years after it was built due to the threat of coastal erosion. But obviously, that's kind of being exacerbated by factors like climate change, and it's become obvious in recent years that the tower is under threat. And once again, we've got some fantastic photographs in the Historic England Archive showing just how close it was to the cliff edge. Um, and so in in um a couple of years ago, the community came together with this great crowdfunding campaign to save this local landmark. Um, the project also got funding from I think Cornwall Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Um and so it was it was dismantled and kind of piece by piece and moved inland um in 2024 by about 100 metres. And there's a fantastic time-lapse video on the Buddhist stratton town council website that shows you know the dismantling of this structure and you know them sort of rebuilding it um down the line. Um, we were involved in that project, giving um advice our regional colleagues in the southwest were involved, and we've also now amended the list entry on the National Heritage List for England so that now includes information on that relocation, um, and so sort of helping to ensure that that's part of the story of that asset. Um and it's definitely a case that we use um when we want to kind of talk about the the impacts that the climate change is having, but also on you know how people can come together um and and help and take action um at their local sites.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Okay, that's that's so interesting. And I'm I'm I googled uh Bud StormTap whilst you're talking there, and it's a beautiful structure, and I can understand um it is really iconic, and there is a picture I can see here, it is teaching on the brink, uh that obviously that particular photo obviously taken before it was relocated. But as you say, vulnerability and adaptation are woven then into its own story historically. So I mean that's that's great, isn't it? That actually it's already had to undergo this transformation and this adaptation um at a at a point in its in its previous you know history, and that is actually part of its own story, which I think is lovely, the fact that you know you're able to weave that his historical um vulnerability in into this more subsequent relocation as well. Um and you you you referenced there um the the research um from two years ago, and I think what that obviously shows is that you know people care, don't they? You know, people care about our heritage, our culture, um, their local environment and and want to want to be a part of it, want to help preserve it um and conserve it. And I suppose then you know, on that point of of preservation, you know, we do want to preserve our history. Uh, but but if we take the viewed storm tower as a as a really good example, you know, these are assets, buildings um that are physically well and literally on the edge. Um now we had a chat, you and I, last week uh about the podcast, and you mentioned a phrase that I I'd not heard before, and it was how to lose well. So tell me about this, because sometimes uh assets and buildings will will be lost, won't they? I mean, that is a that is a you know an inevitability. So tell me about this phrase how to lose well.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah, of course. Um yeah, as you say, you know, for some assets, I mean, the the action that was taken at the Beauty Storm Tower is obviously relatively um kind of radical in that you know the whole structure was was rebuilt um uh elsewhere. Um and a great many heritage assets will be able to increase their resilience to climate change impacts through more simple measures, you know, in terms of monitoring that risk over time to understand change and kind of carry on functioning as normal, um, you know, by perhaps, I don't know, if you're increased risk of uh flooding and you know, increased rainwater rates, you might need to think about your roofing and your gutters and things like that. But for a large number of organ of organizations and assets, that that will be the case. But as you say, for a sizable minority of assets, um, there will need to be a greater scale of change through direct or indirect impacts such as flooding, coastal change or drought, um, or indeed through the human responses to climate change. Um, so for example, changes in the way that we manage um sea level rise in flooding, um, but also the way that we manage changes in land use. And for some assets that that will result in loss. Um and I think within the heritage sector, we are very accustomed to managing change within the historic environment. We we do that all the time through the planning system, um, and also, you know, we're we're used to loss in some cases because archaeological excavation is an inherently destructive process in many cases. Um I think we're less comfortable with navigating the process of loss due to climate change or environmental change, which doesn't ask for permission, um, and there isn't even necessarily a clear end point. You know, we don't we don't know uh necessarily what climate change is is going to do um everywhere in the country. Um and so this concept of losing well is something that I first encountered a few years ago during a project which developed the concept of adaptive release, which we might talk about a bit more in a moment. But essentially, if we can't conserve something into the future, we know it's going to be lost. How do we first of all make the most of what we have at the moment and then say goodbye to it in a positive way? Um, I think that sort of facilitating the process of loss in a way that involves local communities making memories with a site, first of all, while it's while it's still there, because in a lot of cases, um not in every case, but in a lot of cases it's going to take a long time for loss to happen. It's not just going to be, you know, overnight. Um so making the most of what you have, and but then also doing um, you know, kind of maybe community projects uh to help people um process that loss. Um and there might also be things that we can learn from an asset during um that the process of loss, you know, we're already very used to um recording archaeological sites in advance of loss. Um and so it's how we kind of take lessons from that into sites where you know that are maybe more prominent, more obvious, that we know are going to be um, you know, they are they are going to go. Um something that we're um working on at the moment is trying to get a much more kind of granular understanding of the different types of heritage assets that are at risk from different climate change hazards. Um we're doing a research project at the moment to look at um scheduled ancient monuments um along the coast to work out what types of monument are most likely to be at risk from things like coastal erosion or inundation, and that we can then start to kind of understand and maybe help people prioritize the action that they take to either increase the resilience or in some cases to lose those assets. Um I think the conversations around losing well are some that we're still quite nervous to have. You know, nobody likes thinking about um that kind of impact, but if we can do it in a positive way, and there, you know, we can learn a lot from you know other cultures where this is is kind of more common globally. Um we did a series of webinars a few years ago where the concept of loss has come up for um particularly say small island nations who are already confronting this. Um but it is it is something that we can absolutely learn from and and hopefully do um and not just say, okay, well, we need to step back and let it go, but but actually help people um through that that process um and and maybe take some positives from it as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, that's that's really interesting. So um I'm I'm gonna sort of move the conversation on at this point because you've you've just mentioned a phrase uh adaptive release in that in that uh discussion there. Now we've talked about adaptation a lot on the podcast. Um you know, and and the reality is we won't be able to build resilient places, create resilient assets or resilient landscapes if if we don't adapt to the effects of a change in climate. But also what's gone before what we've done in the past probably won't work necessarily the same in the future. So we've we've got to adapt our policies, um you know, our our strategies and our practices. Um and you know, it in the context of climate change, you know, it isn't it isn't just a change in coastline, and you've you've mentioned the impacts of flooding and uh extreme heat and and drought and so on. So let's unpick this phrase adaptive release then. And and also there's another phrase that I'd like to uh weave into this conversation, which is one of adaptation pathways, which we have talked about on other on other episodes of the podcast, but I'd like to talk about it now in the context of the historical environment. So, yeah, adaptive release and adaptive pathways, maybe you could take us through those.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, of course. Um, first of all, just you obviously you're saying adaptations uh you know kind of what you talk about a lot on the on the podcast. And I was just um reflecting the other day that um we often think about adaptation policy as maybe lagging a bit behind uh mitigation policy. You know, everybody kind of understands the drive to net zero and maybe a bit less so when it comes to you know adapting to the the impacts that are already sort of baked in, as it were. Um but we we have taken quite a lot of positivity from last year's uh COP in that there are now heritage indicators in the global goal on adaptation. And so we're sort of really positive about getting more traction um in the adaptation policy space, both nationally and um internationally. So that was a that was just a sort of positive note to uh start this uh this bit of the discussion on. Um so, in terms of adaptive release, first of all, um it's it's a relatively new approach which um supports the management of a heritage asset through the process of change, um, you know, up to and including loss due to environmental processes such as climate change impacts. Um, it was a concept developed through the Landscape Futures project, which ran from 2020 to 2022. Um it was led by Exeter University along with UCL, Historic England, the National Trust, and Natural England, who we were all co-investigators on the research project. Um, and essentially that this part of it was focused on developing a proactive approach to the management of transformation and loss of heritage assets in a more kind of creative way. Um, and so it emphasizes the need to integrate um historic management, uh, sorry, historic environment planning and natural environment planning to work with those environmental and climate change impacts that are happening at the landscape scale. Um, and as we talked about earlier, um, a key part of adaptive release approaches require um meaningful engagement with local communities and stakeholders. So adaptive release is an active process. Um, it's not a synonym for more sort of passive managed decline approaches where you might say record an asset in advance of loss, make it safe and then walk away. Um it's a much more um active and flexible process where you know we might not know what the end point is, um, but it can help us think through the conservation of the sort of heritage values of an asset for as long as is feasible, but also consider what other values might be sort of generated as we manage that change into the long term, particularly environmental values. So, you know, there might be environmental or ecosystem benefits that we can increase at a site, um, even where the heritage values are decreasing over time. Um we're working at the moment to understand a bit more about where we think this type of approach um might be appropriate. Um we're doing some work with um Alan Baxter Limited World Monuments Fund and Green Gauge to help us think about the sort of viability of adaptive release as a long-term management approach to climate change. And hopefully the research report for that will be out um in a few weeks' time.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Um so that's that's kind of one area of thinking that's that's going on. It's a kind of active area of work at the moment, um, as is as you alluded to earlier, um adaptive pathways. Um and I think while we haven't necessarily sort of actively tested um adaptive release yet within the heritage sector, adaptive release might, for some sites, be one of the adaptive pathways that a site might be able to go down, essentially, um for those already familiar with adaptive pathways. Um so we're essentially about to start testing a framework based on the academic approach of um adaptive pathways. Um, and again, it's it's about allowing for more kind of flexible ways forward than we necessarily currently think about long-term planning um within uh the planning system due to the inherent uncertainty of climate change. We we don't want people to kind of paint themselves into a corner by investing heavily in um some sort of climate resilience uh scheme, and then realizing in 15-20 years' time that actually climate change impacts haven't done that, um, what they were expecting, and so you know now they're going to have to spend you know extra thought, money, time doing something else instead. Um, so the idea is that that you know, you as an as a heritage asset manager um would have a contingency plan. This is you know sort of current practice. You you might have a contingency plan for when you're approached to a heritage asset, so you're maybe managing a heritage asset as a visitor attraction, um you might know that for some reason in the future that might no longer be viable, so you have a contingency plan. The adaptive pathways approach allows you to think through numerous contingency plans, in this case for numerous different potential climate futures, um, and that allows you to sort of um develop a kind of dynamic pathway through those different um through those different paths as and when different trigger points have been reached. So, say for example, um coastal erosion might be impacting more of your site than you than you thought, and so that's a trigger point to move to a different pathway, um, either for the for the long or the or the short term. Um so the idea is that it can help us to act but not make decisions um kind of too early and find out that what we've done isn't the the most appropriate action to have taken. Um again, the the approach that we're kind of thinking about is rooted in community engagement, co creation of different pathways. You you know, you can develop a sort of cost benefit analysis of different pathways and work out which ones are the most appropriate to take forward as you do this process with your stakeholders. And I think the sort of point of difference between this within the heritage sector and maybe some other sectors is that we're trying to think about how this matches up with cultural heritage capital, which is a piece of work that's progressing at the moment with colleagues in Historic England's Department for Culture, Media and Sport and elsewhere. It's essentially thinking about how we value the benefits and services that society gets from our heritage asset. Obviously, we see them as having heritage services, that's why they're special, that's why they're significant as heritage assets. But what other values do they have in terms of are they places of education, well-being? Do they have natural and ecosystem values as landscapes or parks, places that bring economic benefits to their sort of locality? And so we're thinking that that changes in the sort of network of these benefits might be a way of identifying the trigger points at which you agree to move from one pathway to another within your kind of adaptive pathways framework. Again, it's sort of relatively early days with that for us, we are kind of testing it at the moment, but it's quite an exciting time to be part of the conversation. It's already being used within other sectors, and the Environment Agency is sort of testing a variation of adaptive pathways in terms of flooding and coastal erosion risk management within the UK. And so it's something, it's a piece of work that I'm really interested in and excited about. And in terms of just a sort of, it is a sort of hypothetical example, but just giving people a way to kind of, you know, if you're thinking, what does she mean by that? Um say you have a historic coastal fort site that is vulnerable, you know, you know it's already vulnerable to coastal change, um sea level rise, inundation, and that kind of thing. Um and it's becoming increasingly vulnerable due to say increased stormy weather that is starting to maybe undermine the foundations of that site. Um if you keep on the current sort of management trajectory of that site, say as a visitor attraction, you know that its heritage services are going to decrease over time. It's not safe for people to visit for a start, and ultimately the site is going to be lost due to coastal erosion. What you might do is say, well, we're pretty sure that if we build up the sea level defences for now, that may buy us 20 to 30 years where we can still have relatively normal heritage services coming from that site. Um and so you might invest that money over the short term and use that time to engage your stakeholders, carry out an adaptive pathway process, which might bring up some more kind of radical uh options of how to manage that loss in the long term. So, for example, you might decide that you could actually take down parts of the assets to keep increasing the sea defences over a longer period of time. So the site would look different, but it would still have some sort of heritage value. Um, but then maybe over the long term, what you think is a different pathway might be, okay, we're not, what's the point of spending money for further money on the sea defences because we know the site is going to go. But could we invest some money in understanding what the ecosystem values that we might get out of this are? If it's a if it's a coastal site, you might be able to say manage it as an artificial reef as the site is lost, perhaps for you know seabirds or other types of of um marine life that might like to kind of live in the asset as it um as it declines. And that is it's something that does happen um now um in in assets that have been kind of left. Um but is this a process that we can manage more actively um and you know, have a kind of conscious pathway um to think about uh how we manage the loss of heritage values, um, but maybe increase uh the other values that you might get from that site is not just going to be an empty space. You know, there's always going to be something there, um, and and what can we do with it um over the long term?

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, and I and I really like the um uh the the the adaptation pathway approach actually because uh it it's it's rooted in in the need for flexibility over time. And and as you say, rather than you know, some sometimes when we when we try to you know manage risk, we try to design it out from day one. Um but actually this is about honesty and it's about uh you know grown-up effective engagement and saying there are a number of pathways here, and there's a number of trigger points, and let's let's just um let's just bank those and let's just see um and give ourselves that flexibility so that as we reach a number of different trigger points and we don't quite know necessarily what those might be or which one of those might come first, then actually we can we can flex and adapt um rather than rather than you know, as you say, you know, investing in something that might not be the most suitable or sustainable or indeed resilient um for that particular asset or asset or landscape or or or place right now. Um, okay, we've almost sort of running out of time soon, but um there is one point I'd like to talk about uh finally, and that is what Historic England are doing to support all the different um owners of historic buildings around the UK, be that um you know, landowners or heritage trusts or or churches or you know other other assets. You know, if you are an owner of one of these, what what advice and support can Historic England give to you?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah, of course, as I say, many owners and managers will be able to increase the resilience of their assets. Um and we are working to develop um advice both for um the people that kind of own and manage these assets, but also for the professionals who need to carry out that that work um in an appropriate way to increase the resilience and also for local planning authorities who need to make those decisions um on listed building and other consents as they as they kind of come forward. Um so we already have quite a lot of content on our website to help people start thinking about risks to their assets in terms of um sort of both sides of climate action. Really, we have a lot of information on how you might make your um historic building more energy efficient, how you might sort of retrofit um in that space. Um we have our brilliant technical conservation team are always updating those pages, and we're also having got an increasing amount of content on our website, which is all sort of free and publicly available on risk assessments and adaptation. Um so we particularly have um recent uh work on uh flood resilience and also what people might start to think about if their um heritage asset is is kind of overheating and causing problems for people um during the summer months. Um so first really check check out our website, um, but there's also quite a lot of work um underway. Um we actually did a piece of work um feels like a long time ago now, but it was only last year, um, with JBA looking at climate change risk assessment. Um essentially, your your colleagues helped us uh think about a climate change risk assessment methodology that would be flexible enough to allow people to start thinking about their climate change risk, even if they don't have very much experience in this space, and all the way up to people who have maybe quite a lot of resource, quite a lot of expertise and understanding already. Um so that that was published as a research report, which is on our website, and what we're doing with that now is kind of going through it and um writing it up as a sort of climate change risk assessment and brief that would help people actually carry these um assessments out on their sites. Um that's something that we're testing at the moment with um various other heritage organizations, um, and we will add that to the to the website um once we've kind of got there. But essentially the the climate change homepage on our website, which is um kind of real it's relatively easy to find from the the Historic England homepage, is the is the place to go for um advice and guidance from us.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Fantastic. Thank you. Kate, it's been a really great conversation today. Um thanks for coming on the podcast. I've really enjoyed it. So many different um perspectives that we've that we've talked about. And um, yeah, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we've reached the end of our time today. If you've enjoyed listening, please hit the subscribe button so you're ready for our next episode in a month's time. And if you'd like to support the show, consider sharing it with others or leaving us a short review wherever you're listening. It really helps more people to discover and enjoy the podcast. Thanks for joining us. I'm Phil Emonson, and you've been listening to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting.