Resilient Cultural Heritage and Tourism : Applying Japanese Lessons of Integrating Disaster Risk Management with Cultural Heritage Preservation (English)

Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, and fires threaten treasured heritage worldwide. Cultural heritage (CH) is not just about monuments or traditions, but also about the people whose identity is inextricably linked with this heritage. While protecting CH is a priority in many countries, a knowledge gap exists regarding the systemic integration of disaster risk management (DRM) within the cultural heritage and tourism (CHT) sectors. With a $700,000 grant, the Japan-World Bank Program for Mainstreaming DRM in Developing Countries aimed to close this gap by developing substantive technical and operational guidance for countries, specifically Myanmar, Bhutan, Uzbekistan, Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, and World Bank technical teams alike to integrate risk identification, reduction, preparedness and response, and resilient recovery into their CHT sectors, drawing from Japanese expertise and efforts to preserve their treasures from the past. This knowledge was then consolidated into a guidance note, Resilient Cultural Heritage: Learning from the Japanese Experience, highlighting ten key considerations that inform the development of relevant legal, institutional and policy frameworks, as well as operational guidance for designing and implementing resilient CHT solutions.