Heritage and Climate: Unlocking Low-Carbon Futures at COP30
At COP30, culture is key to inspiring low-carbon, inclusive climate mitigation solutions
Authors: Lori Ferriss, Built Buildings Lab and Lucia Ixchiu, Peoples For Forests Community
The 2025 UN Climate Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil (11–22 November) marks a critical opportunity to advance the inclusion of culture and heritage into mitigation policy. This article outlines how culture connects to COP30’s mitigation negotiations, what’s at stake, and the priorities advocates should press to turn recognition into finance and action.
The Last Chance to Keep 1.5 Alive
COP30 has been declared “the COP of implementation and adaptation” by this year’s Presidency. While adaptation rightly gains attention as a crucial issue of economic resilience and climate justice, this year also marks an urgent juncture for mitigation – the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As countries renew their NDCs for the last time before 2030, the window of opportunity to meet the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement continues to shrink. According to the 2024 UN Emissions Gap Report, the world is on a trajectory toward 2.6-3.1°C of warming in this century, and the Stockholm Resilience Center found that seven out of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed this year. Now is the time to accelerate decarbonization efforts. Every reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and every degree of warming that can be avoided will improve the outlook for the future.
Why Culture and Heritage Matter for Climate Mitigation
Cultural heritage is a critical and largely untapped lever in meeting the decarbonization goals of the Paris Agreements. Cultural heritage offers thousands of years of evidence demonstrating how people can thrive without a dependence on fossil fuels. It shapes the ways communities understand risk, steward resources, and mobilise collective action; it is fundamental in influencing how societies reduce emissions and adapt to a changing climate.Embedding cultural knowledge in climate mitigation policy helps to ensure that transitions are equitable, locally grounded, and resilient, catalyzing the transformation needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
As governments gather for COP30, recognising this cultural dimension has never been more urgent. Meeting global mitigation targets will demand new, or in this case, old, technologies and ways of living and sustaining our environments. From traditional land stewardship to community design and creative industries, cultural heritage offers practical knowledge and shared values to drive decarbonization. Bringing culture into the heart of COP30’s agenda could help turn global commitments into collective action.
Culture in the Sharm El Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP)
Within UNFCCC policy pathways, the Sharm El Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP) has provided key opportunities to integrate cultural heritage into policy decision.Launched at COP27, the MWP serves as a focused platform for advancing mitigation efforts, notably on contentious issues like fossil-fuel phaseout. In 2024, cultural advocates through the Climate Heritage Network engaged heavily with the MWP theme of “cities: buildings and urban systems.” The importance of built heritage in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through strategies like building reuse, materials circularity, and vernacular design methods were highlighted as critical strategies in advancing mitigation within this sector. Through this advocacy, the 2024 MWP secured the sole reference to culture coming out of COP29.
In 2025 the MWP pivots its focus to two themes in which cultural heritage offers critical mitigation solutions: the waste sector, including circular economy approaches, and the forest or “AFOLU” (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) sector, which includes addressing deforestation, restoring degraded lands and enhancing carbon sinks.
Heritage Solutions for a Circular Economy
As described in the Climate Heritage Network;s formal response to the MWP sixth global dialogue cultural heritage is integral to advancing both technical and social solutions for mitigation in this sector.
Heritage practices including building reuse and conservation, deconstruction and material salvage, and traditional low-carbon design—supported by tools like 3D scanning—reduce waste, conserve materials, and lower lifecycle emissions.
More broadly, culture and heritage can revitalize traditional skills, support capacity building to develop a circular economy, and leverage arts and storytelling to drive a culture shift to accelerate circular, regenerative, and low-carbon solutions.
Looking to Indigenous Knowledge to Unlock Mitigation Solutions for Land Use and Forestry
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples around the world have practiced forms of forest stewardship that sustain both ecosystems and communities.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), rooted in observation, spirituality, and reciprocity, offers vital models for global forestry and land-use strategies. Indigenous Knowledge, especially through restoration of land rights and respect of local customs and governance, offers impactful solutions toward the mitigation goals of the MWP.
Notably, this year the Amazon Flotilla, a 3,000 km river-journey from the Andes into the Amazon basin, will arrive at COP30 to bring frontline Indigenous voices into the heart of climate decision-making.
Culture-Based Climate Mitigation in the Action Agenda
The COP30 Action Agenda provides another opportunity for cuture beyond the negotiations of the MWP.
Through an Activation Group focused on Culture, Cultural Heritage Protection, and Climate Action, plans are being developed to build capacity to integrate cultural heritage into building sector mitigation policy, along with plans to further cultural heritage in adaptation planning and storytelling as a catalyst for action.
These plans elevate the role of culture and integrate culture-based solutions into a holistic agenda brought forth through the Action Agenda.
Conclusion
COP30 in Belém marks an important moment for climate mitigation policy to curb global warming.
Through the new NDCs, the outcomes of the Mitigation Work Programme, and the advancement of the Action Agenda, culture and heritage offer timely solutions to reduce greenhouse gases while catalyzing the cultural shifts needed to adapt for the future.
From traditional land stewardship to circular economy approaches, culture offers proven pathways to reduce emissions and strengthen resilience.
What’s at stake in Belém is turning this recognition into concrete policy, finance, and action—ensuring that the transition to a low-carbon future reflects the wisdom, values, and creativity of communities worldwide.
