Water Heritage and the Importance of Local Knowledge in Climate Action.

Thousands of significant archaeological and heritage sites line the coasts of every continent, threatened by loss and damage from rising sea levels and other cascading impacts, such as flooding, landslides, increased salination, erosion, or even the shift from being land-based heritage to being submerged or underwater heritage. There is a need for a sustainable initiative across the national, regional, and local levels to manage this degenerative process. To date, however, measures for mitigating climate change impacts remain insufficient. There is also the need for a further push in thinking about how coastal archaeology and culturally submerged sites may be remembered or, if on the cards, protected. The Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN), a national project working across coastal sites in England, works with communities to support and empower them in identifying and understanding their immediate environment and the relevance of the heritage therein. In this article, the CITiZAN team presents the range of vulnerable coastal heritage found across England, discusses why there is limited capacity or resources to protect these sites, and highlights the communities that have either reactively or proactively responded to changing climate conditions and, in so doing, provide examples of resourcefulness and resilience. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of communities in understanding intertidal-zone and coastal heritage, and the relevance of water heritage to understanding climate change impacts terrestrially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]