Workshop: Heritage-Based Climate Solutions for Today’s Mediterranean Cities

Countries across the Mediterranean region are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as desertification, land degradation, food insecurity and climate-induced displacement. However, they boast rich indigenous knowledge of adapting to climatic risks and extreme weather events.

This urgency for affordable solutions highlights the need for swift and practical actions. The MENA region has a wealth of traditional wisdom and practices accumulated over generations. MENA cities have honed architectural and urban planning techniques that naturally respond to local climate challenges, emphasizing locally sourced materials, passive cooling mechanisms, and integration with the environment.

Recognizing and incorporating these proven approaches into modern initiatives presents a tangible opportunity to bolster climate adaptation efforts. This requires systematic mapping, reinterpretation, and purposeful integration of heritage into the evolving urban landscapes of today.

To recontextualize and reinterpret traditional climate-adaptation techniques and heritage-based knowledge into today's urban needs, Cities Alliance is convening a Brainstorming Lab titled "Back to the Future: Heritage-based Climate Solutions for Today’s Mediterranean Cities". 

The event will bring together diverse practitioners, urban planners, climate experts, and representatives from institutions including UNESCO and Habitat for Humanity, to jointly develop a toolkit for heritage-based climate solutions.

The agenda includes discussions around climate challenges in cities, existing traditional techniques, and brainstorming strategies for scaling up solutions through local groups's engagement and international support. The workshop is an opportunity to forge collaborations across sectors that rarely unite to address climate change through heritage-based solutions, involving local communities.

This is an invitation-only/ in-person event. Register via email to mmunzert@citiesalliance.org