In July 2023 the National Trust made a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Climate Resilience in Victoria.

The Inquiry will examine into the main risks facing Victoria’s built environment and infrastructure from climate change and the impact these will have on the people of Victoria, including how the Government is preparing for these impacts, the barriers in upgrading infrastructure to become more resilient to the impacts, and the preparedness for future climate disaster events.

The NTAV response emphasises the importance of heritage conservation in mitigating climate change and recommends policies and incentives for the adaptive reuse, retrofitting, and restoration of existing buildings. ​Our submission also highlights the need to protect and increase green spaces, a critical form of public infrastructure, to support community wellbeing, combat the urban heat island effect, and maintain biodiversity.

Heritage is Climate Action

Cultural Heritage refers to the qualities of a society that are valued and passed on to future generations. Cultural Heritage can be tangible and intangible, built and environmental, an object and a practise. Cultural Heritage is not a frozen example in time, it is dynamic and adaptive, it is valued because it carries meaning, and its qualities are shared across communities and social barriers.

Heritage and in particular heritage conservation, is an inherently sustainable practice. It is now well established that investment in materials and the embodied energy of existing buildings generally emits less emissions than demolition and new construction, and the conservation of cultural landscapes protects trees and plants that sequester carbon and provide crucial habitats to support biodiversity.

Recently the Heritage Council Victoria released a report on the value of heritage, Why Heritage: A synthesis of evidence for the social, economic and environmental impacts of heritage. The report includes analysis of the existing research and data regarding Climate Change and heritage, it notes;

Climate change is one of the most urgent policy drivers for our time. Despite evidence for the role of cultural heritage in decarbonisation, reducing waste and ecosystem resilience/ biodiversity, the role of cultural heritage is often overlooked in key policies which prevents the benefits of caring for cultural heritage from being realised. It also leads to a risk of ‘maladaptation’ as policies designed to deliver wider benefits fail to do so, because for example traditional knowledge has been lost or ignored. This is a significant research topic that needs a collaborative approach to identify the work currently taking place across universities in the natural and built environment sectors, and to make the connection between that and cultural heritage initiatives. It also involves moving the debate from a narrow focus on how to retrofit listed heritage items to the bigger question of how doing more to conserve, repair, mend and adapt what we have now (whether protected or not) can contribute to addressing climate breakdown.

The Greenest Building

The 2021 State of the Environment Report states that “Our built environment is currently the world’s single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It consumes around 33% of our water and generates 40% of our waste . . . As much as 25% of Australia’s carbon emissions come from buildings.” In summary ‘The greenest building… is the one that is already built.’

A ground breaking 2011 study by the US National Trust for Historic Preservation—“The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Value of Building Reuse”—concluded that, when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction. The study found that it takes between 10 to 80 years for a new building that is 30% more efficient than an average-performing existing building to overcome, through efficient operations, the negative climate change impacts related to the construction process, and that collectively, building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. This is further supported by research undertaken by Historic England, which found that when a typical historic building is refurbished and retrofitted, it will emit less carbon by 2050 than a new building.

Locally, research undertaken by architect Ruth Redden explores the nexus between heritage conservation and sustainability in the Australian context, highlighting broad environmental benefits of conserving historic buildings, and providing recommendations to produce guidelines and resources to support the promotion of sustainable preservation. Additionally, the ongoing maintenance and redevelopment of existing buildings has been proven to provide sustainable employment opportunities and economic benefits. The ‘reuse first’ approach that heritage conservation naturally incorporates is an essential mindset, for policy, development and investment decision making as we combat the climate crisis.

Furthermore, the expertise of heritage professionals, particularly traditional trades people, to repair and retrofit built structures is an asset for the resilience of heritage and non-heritage buildings alike. As the risks of climate change impacts increase, tapping into the rich expanse of industry knowledge inherent within the heritage workforce can only benefit the resilience of our built environments.

Indeed, the past holds many of the answers to how we should build in the future for climate resilience and lower energy consumption. Traditional and vernacular buildings are living artefacts, providing examples of (now ‘alternative’) uses of materials and methods which can reduce embodied energy in building construction such as the use of calcium oxide as a binder instead of carbon producing cement. Or how to build thermal mass in a building without using cement. Their continued existence and resilience mean that they are time proven and can be tested and measured for reference in performance standards or incorporated into modern standards.

Natural Infrastructure

Heritage is not just buildings, cultural landscapes are the combined works of nature and humankind, which express a long and intimate relationship between people and our natural environments. Cultural landscapes often reflect specific techniques of sustainable land-use, considering the characteristics and limits of the natural environment they are established in. The continued existence of traditional forms of land-use supports biological diversity in many regions of the world and the protection of traditional cultural landscapes is helpful in maintaining biological diversity.

Moreover, cultural landscapes such as green space in more urban contexts contribute environmentally, socially, and economically across Victoria. It is well known that trees can mitigate the urban heat island effect and provide health benefits to the community, as well as create healthier ecosystems with a greater diversity of species in urbanised contexts. Furthermore, green space improves wellbeing and liveability in areas with increasing population density and development pressures.

Climate change will have critical impacts on our green spaces. This living infrastructure, and the biodiversity dependent on it, face higher temperatures, less water availability and more frequent extreme events such as floods and damaging winds. Ensuring these spaces can adapt to such pressures is essential. Thriving green spaces are fundamental to mitigating heat within cities but climate change places this at serious risk as heat effects intensify and a greater amount of green space will be required just to maintain existing mitigation levels. If adequate green space is not maintained and increased, levels of amenity and liveability will decline.

At the same time, the need for increased housing density to accommodate future population growth is widely acknowledged. While preferable to further urban sprawl, this will increase pressures on our existing green spaces. As a minimum, current green space benchmarks must be maintained as we face a changing climate, but to effectively mitigate climate change impacts the net amount of green space in urban areas will need to increase.

The National Trust strongly believes that access to green space is essential public infrastructure2 and must be given the same priority and consideration as built infrastructure when assessing climate change impacts and necessary climate resilience measures. The value of ready access to green spaces was acutely felt during the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdowns in Victoria, and as a result demand for sufficient, quality green space is greater than ever. Provision, funding and maintenance of green spaces demands planning and resourcing equal to that of other forms of community infrastructure. Such spaces are central to the liveability of local communities and have a key role to play as we adapt to climate change.

READ OUR FULL SUBMISSION HERE.

Learn more on the National Trust Climate Action Plan.