5. Cultural Heritage and Resilience

This chapter investigates the contemporary definitions of resilience and resilience thinking since 1973. Similar to other chapters, it looks into those definitions and their evolutions at international and European levels, as well as within scholarly debates in various fields regarding the term. Having synthetically compared and analyzed the existing and up-to-date definitions of resilience from different fields, this chapter raises awareness about the need for more up-to-date emergent ideas in the definition of resilience—positive adaptability and transformability—alongside more traditional ones in heritage protection conservation and management. Exploring international frameworks such as the 2012 Venice Declaration on Building Resilience at the Local Level towards Protected Cultural Heritage and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies, and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction frameworks like Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, this chapter, in particular, advocates for considering heritage-at-risk framework approach to resilience thinking, from having curative interventions to preventive measures, as well as detailing out the ways toward the recognition of pro-active pre-disaster preventive measures and the proactive role of heritage in disaster risk reduction.