Seapeople Heritage & Climate Emergency
Legendary Sailing Ship Heraclitus spotlights Coastal Communities in Wake of Rising Sealevel.
The overall aim for the Sea Peoples Cultural Heritage project is to understand the role of traditional knowledge in bringing about change needed to secure a sustainable environmental and economic future for people and the planet.
Rising sea level disproportionally affects coastal communities
This oral history project will explore the relationship between heritage and sustainable development from different geographical, topical and philosophical perspectives.
Bound by common themes of climate change and globalisation impacts on the ecosystems that coastal communities are ancestrally connected to, live, thrive and depend upon, the project will showcase how cultural heritage is at the heart of sustainable development, and solutions must be enabled by people-centred approaches and transparent, accountable and participatory governance.
Image Courtesy Ecotechnics Maritime
Local Communities are the Guardians of their Coasts
Coastal citizens are vested in protecting the land and the ocean. The traditional ecological knowledge of coastal communities can help their citizens develop adaptations to the changes now manifesting and especially those colossal irreversible future changes already locked in by global warming of the past decades.
Image by Abouzeid, Tunisia
Living Open Access Archive of Stories
Oral history and story telling has the potential to directly increase understanding of environmental hazards due to climate change, and of nuanced societal factors like diversity and inclusion.
RV Heraclitus’ Sea Peoples Cultural Heritage Project will collect and collate traditional knowledge that is rapidly vanishing from coastal communities. By gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and personal experiences of individuals across coastal communities, it will give a polyphonic range of views on and memories of significant events and drastic changes, providing value, increased skills, knowledge sharing and community-based economic and environmental viability.
The Project aims to create a living and open access archive of stories, as well as ecological and cultural data, to spotlight coastal communities who are disproportionately affected by the effects of globalisation and climate change, such as sea level rise, storm surge, erosion and loss of coastal habitats.
Furthermore, as an oral history project it offers an ethical approach to storytelling, creating a platform for marginalised or silenced communities to be represented and heard, and helps end-users, (such as social advocates, regional coastal managers, policy makers, researchers, general public, etc), establish connections to and learn directly from individuals impacted by specific issues/events.