The Preserving Legacies

Climate Custodian Cohort Program

This comprehensive climate adaptation program guides an annual cohort of heritage places and practices on a multi-year journey from education to action.

The Program

Preserving Legacies is on a mission to support local change makers with training, tools, and connections to equitably adapt their community’s heritage places and practices from the impacts of climate change. Each year of our flagship program builds on the last, transforming site custodians into climate custodians, education into impact.

Year 1

Learn

Enhance your climate knowledge, capacity, and professional connections through climate and heritage literacy training via online learning modules, virtual discussion sessions, and an international in-person workshop.

Year 2

Assess

Apply your training to lead your community through a climate risk assessment for your place or practice. Risk assessments help communities map what they value most about their heritage, visualize the current and projected climate hazards they might face, and evaluate which of their community's heritage values are most at risk to those climate hazards.

Year 3

Act

Use your risk assessment as a guide to design, implement, test, and scale climate adaptation solutions that are culturally-appropriate for your communities. 


Year 4

Amplify

Share insights from your adaptation actions to inspire other climate custodians, inform policy, and build a more resilient global community.

"I feel a great joy to start this experience with Preserving Legacies, I hope to build bridges of collaboration to implement projects and measures to conserve cultural and natural heritage."

Diana Bermúdez
Site Custodian, La Floresta

"I want to use this opportunity to help preserve my tribe's landmarks and history Not only that, I believe this project is a good step forward to help indigenous people rights to manage and embrace their natural and traditional resources."

Bernard Kondi
Tawaki Coconut Plantation, Wakapi, Gauwe and Popar Megalith Stones

Our Values

Our values are woven into all that we do in order to ensure that climate adaptation solutions are sustainable, equitable, and effective.

Community-Led

Resilient communities are ones that own their adaptation process, data, and solutions.

Values-Driven

Rooting adaptation action in values ensures that solutions are aligned with community priorities.

Open Access

Democratizing access to climate adaptation is critical for scaling climate solutions around the world.

Science-Based

Integrating cutting edge science into our processes keeps us on the forefront of what's possible.