A/75/298 ensure a comprehensive approach to all aspects of culture, cultural rights and cultural heritage and to all regions. More progress has been made with regard to considering climate impacts on tangible cultural heritage than any other aspect, though even it remains inadequately recognized as an at-risk item. 45 Adequate analysis and documentation, including a complete mapping of cultural and cultural rights damage, and the development of comprehensive strategies for preventing and responding to it, are essential tasks at the international and nation al levels going forward. A. Cultural heritage 28. Climate change is having and will continue to have grave repercussions for the cultural heritage 46 of all humankind 47 and hence for the related human rights of millions of human beings. The climate emergency will affect all of the values associated with heritage, including its intrinsic, touristic and economic values, as a marker of identity and attachment to place and as “an embodiment of accumulated knowledge”. 48 Losses are not only physical but also economic, social and cultural. “Some cultural heritage places are the sole providers of work or food, and therefore they are essential to the survival of a community: when such places are at risk, the survival of associated communities is threatened.” 49 29. Cultural heritage is a human rights issue, and many rights – from the right to access and enjoy heritage to the right to education – may be gravely affected. The effects also pass through time. History and past achievements of humanity are lost. In the present, people cannot enjoy their rights, including that of learning that history. Future generations will inherit these losses as their connections to the past, to place and to practices are stolen from them by choices made today. Therefore, an environmentally conscious human rights approach to all aspects of heritage is essential. 50 30. Tangible heritage sites face threats, including irreversible damage and loss of outstanding universal value, from, inter alia, temperature changes, soi l erosion, sea level rise and storms. 51 Natural heritage sites face developments such as increasing fires, ocean acidification, bleaching events and habitat changes. A 2005 survey by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNE SCO) World Heritage Centre found that climate change was a threat to 72 per cent of the natural and cultural heritage sites about which responses were received from States parties to the World Heritage Convention. 52 In 2014, an academic study found that more than 130 World Heritage cultural sites were at long-term risk from sea level rise, from the archaeological site of Carthage in Tunisia to the Elephanta Caves in India. 53 Archaeological sites may be affected by increasing soil temperature, wind damage __________________ 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 20-10595 See contribution by Julie’s Bicycle. See A/71/317 and A/HRC/17/38. A. Markham and others, World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate (UNESCO, Union of Concerned Scientists and UNEP, 2016). Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, The Future of Our Pasts (see footnote 29), p. 26. See contribution by International Council on Monuments and Sites. Ibid. Sabine von Schorlemer and Sylvia Maus (eds.), Climate Change as a Threat to Peace: Impacts on Cultural Heritage and Cultural Diversity (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2014). UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Climate Change and World Heritage: Report on Predicting and Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on World Heritage and Strategy to assist States Parties to Implement Appropriate Management Responses, World Heritage report No. 22 (2007), p. 26. A. Markham, World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate (Nairobi, UNEP and UNESCO 2016), p. 14. 9/23