Workshop “Tanzania’s Marine Heritage: A Climate Adaptation Priority”

An interdisciplinary law/archaeology workshop exploring the negative impact of climate change on Tanzania’s marine cultural heritage

About this event

This interdisciplinary workshop aims to bring together lawyers, archaeologists, environmental experts and policymakers to investigate the extent to which marine cultural heritage (MCH) should be represented as a climate adaptation priority in Tanzania’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP); and, in turn, how this representation could provide greater economic and cultural benefits for citizens by creating the potential to attract support from international funds.

Tanzania’s MCH is in danger of being lost or damaged due to climate change. Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Tanzania has prepared a National Adaptation Programme of Action in which it identifies MCH sites as a short-term adaptation priority, and as important to developing sustainable and climate resilient tourism as they are to the country’s enduring cultural heritage. However greater emphasis could be placed on the role that MCH can play in improving the resilience to climate change of coastal communities through sustainable tourism in this sector.

Tanzania is in the process of preparing its NAP, in which it will identify medium- to long-term comprehensive climate adaptation priorities, and this workshop explores the inclusion of MCH as a specific adaptation priority in this policy document so that, ultimately, financial support can be sought for specific projects from the UNFCCC’s financial mechanism and other sources. Greater funding could not only build local capacity to record and preserve MCH at risk of climate change, but also identify infrastructural and developmental priorities to safeguard significant MCH against climate change-related loss and damage to ensure that it becomes an important area of green economic growth for coastal communities through the development of sustainable tourism initiatives, which bolster the resilience of such communities to the negative effects of climate change.

The workshop seeks to address the following questions:

• Should there be a greater focus on the protection of MCH in Tanzania’s NAP, and if so, what impact could such an inclusion realistically have?
• What is the feasibility and viability of including a greater focus on MCH in Tanzania’s NAP?
• If MCH becomes a greater focus in Tanzania’s NAP, what should this look like?
• If feasible and viable, could a similar approach be adopted in the NAPs of other East African coastal countries?