ÖVERSVÄMMADE KULTURARV Hur ökade vattennivåer kan påverka kulturhistorisk bebyggelse i Malmö Stad

Abstract

Climate change affects our world to a greater extent. Temperature changes and higher water levels will affect our cultural environments and adaptations need to be implemented. The impact from floods and high-water flows does not only consist of material impact, but soil erosion also becomes a major problem. Many cultural environments are located on the coasts, which means that protective measures need to be implemented. Flooding also affects parks and gardens, causing historic landscapes to be lost. Within cultural environmental protection, there are different ways of managing risks linked to high water levels. Making risk maps where risks are identified or using geographic information systems makes it possible to map areas and evaluate risks. The mapping can be used both to see how areas have historically been affected by floods and to make future simulations of flood threats. The essay is based on the discourse taken up in Uses of heritage (L. Smith, 2006) and "No future in archaeological heritage management?" (Högberg et al., 2017) about cultural heritage as a theoretical frame of reference. To manage cultural environments and conservation for future generations, there needs to be a critical approach to what is worth preserving. Climate change means that we need to make increasingly strict priorities. It also means that we need to clarify the cultural values that exist so that preservation can be justified. Many cultural environments have deep historical ties with partly materiality and place, partly the people who interacted with the environments over time. The essay examines three places that are historically significant for Malmö in Sweden, and how cultural preservation efforts look like today. The essay then discusses how protective conditions relate to the cultural conservation theories. We need to have a critical approach to how we select objects for future conservation, and to remember that there are groups that have historically had an interpretative advantage through cultural heritage discourses. Cultural heritage is not necessarily intrinsically valuable but becomes so in relation to the human interactions it contributes to. The cultural environment also needs to reflect on the needs of future generations and to keep these in mind when cultural preservation efforts are carried out.