Micro-Climate Blog: New Help for Heritage under Conflict in Ukraine
By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative
Sharing news in support of heritage in Ukraine. The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, commonly known as ICCROM, based in Rome, through their program First Aid and Resilience for Heritage in Times of Crisis (FAR), has completed training of its first class of Ukrainian first aiders for protection of heritage in times of conflict.
The conflict in Ukraine is a heart-bending case of the complex intersections of heritage, conflict, and climate. In February 2022, I was working with the ICCROM FAR program to complete work from their conference Climate.Culture.Peace when the headline flashed that Putin was claiming historical connections to Ukraine as a pretext for invasion. Within a day, colleagues in Ukraine were reaching out to FAR requesting assistance in protecting their collections, which FAR jumped into providing. In this moving 2023 conversation hosted by the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience, Ihor Poshyvailo from Maidan Museum, Kyiv, in conversation with Hadi Marifat, of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization, describes what it has been like to live through these events and care for his museum. And climate-wise, conflict in Ukraine has reshaped flows of oil and natural gas around the world.
With this new class, FAR moved beyond reaction to building new capacity to care for the heritage of Ukraine during this conflict and other events that may come in the future.
Featured Link: https://www.iccrom.org/news/ukraine-gets-its-first-national-team-cultural-first-aiders-support-cultural-recovery
For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.
Photo credit: Participants providing first aid measures to the Viazivka church in Ukraine, including its decorative elements and historic paintings; credit: ICCROM/Maidan Museum, shared at link above.
