The CVI Africa Project improves preparedness measures for African cultural heritage sites and communities by investigating the time-critical need to put cultural heritage onto a new pathway for longer term resilience-building and change management processes in the light of the current and anticipated impacts of climate change and natural disasters.

What Is The Climate Vulnerability Index?

The Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), developed at James Cook University, is a rapid assessment tool to systematically assess climate change vulnerability of World Heritage (WH) properties. The CVI is based on a risk assessment approach, but differs from previous vulnerability assessments as it comprises two distinct stages, assessing:

OUV Vulnerability: Outstanding Universal Value, the central concept for World Heritage); and

Community Vulnerability: Is based on the economic, social and cultural dependencies upon the WH property, and the adaptive capacity of these to cope with climate change, for all types of World Heritage properties (cultural, natural and mixed).

Both results of vulnerability are highly relevant for many groups including the site managers, the responsible management agencies, the businesses that are dependent on the property and the local communities around each WH property, especially as the CVI assesses the extent to which they may be able to adapt.

The CVI is increasingly becoming acknowledged, both within Australia and internationally, as a systematic way to assess the impacts of climate change upon World Heritage properties in a transparent and repeatable way.

William Megarry (Principal Investigator, QUB)
Jane Downes (Co-Investigator, University of the Highlands and Islands)
Ewan Hyslop (Co-Investigator, Historic Environment Scotland)
Albino Pereira Jopela (Co-Investigator, African World Heritage Fund)