Recognizing the Agency of Heritage Custodians and Communities in Accessing Climate Knowledge

Heritage custodians and communities are better equipped to drive effective climate action when they have meaningful access to, and interpretive authority over, scientific climate data produced through Western science. When heritage custodians can engage with climate information and understand both past and present trends, they enhance their agency and leadership in anticipating future climate scenarios. And by connecting these scientific insights to their lived realities and grounding and validating them through Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge systems, heritage custodians are better equipped to guide future visioning processes and lead climate action for their communities, including adaptation.

Heritage custodians need more than data, they need climate services that are accessible, culturally attuned, and designed with culture and heritage in mind.

But to do so, they need more than data, they need climate services that are accessible, culturally attuned, and designed with culture and heritage in mind. When these services are aligned with local ways of knowing and co-developed with heritage places custodians, they become powerful tools that enable heritage custodians and communities to use scientific climate information effectively and to shape locally led strategies that reflect the strengths of plural knowledge systems and the cultural values embedded in place.

The Illusion of Accessibility

Despite the growing availability of climate data through digital platforms, institutional portals, and technical dashboards, meaningful accessibility remains elusive for many, especially those on the frontlines of climate change. These systems are often too technical, too abstract, or not designed for the languages, technologies, or realities of diverse communities. As a result, data may be technically “available” but effectively out of reach; it may be published, but not readily understood; it may be free to access, but functionally unusable. The widespread assumption that making data available is equivalent to making it accessible misses a crucial point: information only becomes empowering when people can understand it, trust it, and apply it in meaningful ways.

The widespread assumption that making data available is equivalent to making it accessible misses a crucial point: information only becomes empowering when people can understand it, trust it, and apply it in meaningful ways.

Climate services, designed to translate scientific data into decision-relevant guidance for climate action, are often positioned as solutions to this accessibility gap. However, most climate services are developed for sectors like agriculture, disaster preparedness, or public health, where success is measured in quantifiable metrics. Heritage places and practices, by contrast, remain largely overlooked, even though they face their own distinct and compounding climate risks, from saltwater intrusion damaging ancient coastlines to changing weather patterns disrupting seasonal rituals and intangible cultural practices. Even when heritage intersects with other climate-vulnerable sectors such as water or food systems, it is rarely addressed through a cultural lens. This renders the values, knowledge systems, and vulnerabilities embedded in heritage places invisible in both climate science and service design.

Data Accessibility: Beyond Availability

For heritage custodians and communities, effective climate services must go beyond accessibility in the technical sense. They must be relevant, inclusive, consistent, and culturally attuned, rooted in the values, priorities, and decision-making processes of place. Climate information that is locked away in spreadsheets, models, or static graphs requiring advanced expertise to decode rarely serves these needs.

Instead, climate data becomes truly powerful when it is adapted to local contexts and shared in ways people can relate to through adapted and place-based climate services become meaningful when data is translated and contextualized, shared as a voice note from the weather office, discussed in a community gathering, or illustrated in a hand-drawn map that integrates forecasts with local ecological knowledge.

What heritage custodians need are services that support plural climate knowledge weaving, enabling the integration of scientific insights with Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge. These services must be co-produced with custodians themselves, expanding narrow definitions of value and honoring different ways of knowing. Without this shift, climate services risk reinforcing the invisibility of heritage in adaptation planning and implementation, and failing those whose deep cultural ties to land, memory, and practice are essential for building climate resilience.

What heritage custodians need are services that support plural climate knowledge weaving, enabling the integration of scientific insights with Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge.

Communities consistently place the most trust in local sources of climate information, tribal natural resource departments, farmers, ranchers, and Traditional Knowledge holders, rather than distant scientific institutions (Reyes-García et al., 2023; Cologna et al., 2024). This underscores the importance of data sovereignty, community-owned infrastructure, and climate services that are shaped with, not just for, those most impacted (PRISM, 2025). Where scientific data lives, and who controls and who communicates it truly matters.

Western Climate Data Governance: Who Decides, Who Benefits?

These challenges of accessibility and absence of adapted climate services are inseparable from the core questions of data governance: who controls climate data, how it is framed, and who decides how it is shared and used. Historically, ownership of Western scientific climate data has been concentrated in national agencies, research institutions, and private entities, often resulting in data collected with public resources being locked behind paywalls or restricted by licensing, serving institutional or commercial interests rather than community needs (Cirad, 2022; Data and Policy, 2024). This model reinforces power imbalances and frequently sidelines other knowledge systems and local priorities, limiting the relevance and legitimacy of climate data for those most affected by climate change (PRISM, 2025). Sole ownership can lead to restricted access, fragmented responses, and the exclusion of frontline communities from decision-making, as seen in West Africa, where meteorological data critical for drought resilience remains gatekept by external institutions, despite being collected on Indigenous lands (Cirad, 2022).  

A new paradigm is urgently needed, moving from extractive ownership models of scientific climate data to participatory stewardship and partnership.

A new paradigm is urgently needed, moving from extractive ownership models of scientific climate data to participatory stewardship and partnership. Ostrom’s (1990) principles for managing the commons show that scientific climate data, like other shared resources, should be governed collectively, with inclusive decision-making to avoid the “tragedy of the commons”. Successful models such as the TAHMO public–private partnership in Africa demonstrate how co-governance frameworks can balance public and private interests while expanding access to real-time meteorological data (Dezfuli et al., 2022). Indigenous-led monitoring programs and participatory data initiatives further exemplify how co-ownership and shared interpretation foster trust, affirm the legitimacy of diverse knowledge systems, and ensure that Western and Indigenous perspectives inform climate adaptation (NESP, 2023; PRISM, 2025). 

Heritage Custodians and Communities as Climate Knowledge Leaders

Heritage custodians and communities are not passive data recipients; they are knowledge holders, decision-makers, and meaning-makers with deep traditions of observing, interpreting, and responding to environmental change. Their lived experiences and local expertise are essential for understanding and addressing climate impacts and risks. Meaningful accessibility to scientific climate data requires moving beyond one-way delivery and embracing reciprocal, respectful relationships. Shared understanding does not happen automatically; it must be built through dialogue, trust, and mutual learning.

Heritage custodians and communities are not passive data recipients; they are knowledge holders, decision-makers, and meaning-makers with deep traditions of observing, interpreting, and responding to environmental change. Their lived experiences and local expertise are essential for understanding and addressing climate impacts and risks.

This also means actively decolonizing dominant models of knowledge production and challenging the assumption that Western science alone defines what counts as valid or useful data. When we ask whether data is not just available, but also understandable, applicable, and meaningful within local contexts, we begin to move toward a more inclusive, relational, and just climate knowledge system. In such systems, climate services are culturally grounded and community-centered, empowering people to determine what data matters, and to interpret, apply, and adapt it on their own terms, in ways that honour their knowledge systems, cultural values, and visions for the future.

When we ask whether data is not just available, but also understandable, applicable, and meaningful within local contexts, we begin to move toward a more inclusive, relational, and just climate knowledge system.

The Preserving Legacies Approach: Strengthening Capacity and Collaboration

The Preserving Legacies approach supports heritage custodians in navigating this complexity by building confidence and strengthening capacity in accessing and working with scientific climate data. Through tailored climate services designed specifically for heritage custodians and delivered via hands-on, participatory training and collaboration, custodians learn to analyze climate model outputs, interpret historical records and future projections, and co-create hazard maps that weave scientific knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, and local knowledge together. 

A key resource in this process is the Regional Data Hubs, a Geographical Information System platform developed by Preserving Legacies to democratize climate data by providing downscaled, accessible climate information tailored to local and regional contexts. Designed with heritage in mind, the Data Hubs deliver downscaled historical and future climate and environmental data that are accessible, locally relevant, visually intuitive, and underpinned by a strong ethical framework. By supporting exploration, interpretation, and place-based dialogue, the Regional Data Hubs allow heritage custodians to engage meaningfully with climate indicators and generate adaptation strategies grounded in both data and cultural context.

When climate scientists and heritage custodians engage in genuine, two-way communication, and when heritage custodians are empowered to interpret and apply the language of Western climate science, the impact is transformative. Adaptation strategies become not only more grounded and effective, but also inclusive, reflecting both scientific rigor and the cultural wisdom of heritage places. Heritage custodians step forward as leaders in weaving together diverse knowledge systems, ensuring that climate resilience is constructed on a foundation of trust, shared memory, and collective care.

Toward a New Paradigm: Heritage Custodians and Communities as Weavers of Climate Knowledge

The future of Western scientific climate data lies in moving beyond traditional, expert-led delivery models toward inclusive, participatory systems of co-production and shared stewardship. Climate data should be recognized not as a commodity or institutional asset, but as a common good, accessible, interpretable, and actionable by those most affected by climate change, particularly Indigenous peoples and local communities experiencing climate-related loss and damage. This does not diminish the value of scientific expertise; rather, it repositions experts as knowledge facilitators or brokers, working in partnership with communities to contextualise data, support decision-making, and build adaptive capacity.

Climate data should be recognized not as a commodity or institutional asset, but as a common good, accessible, interpretable, and actionable by those most affected by climate change.

In this evolving model, climate knowledge is not transferred from experts to communities, it is co-created and woven together through respectful, reciprocal exchange. When scientific data is made open, collaborative, and locally accessible, it can be meaningfully woven into Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge systems by heritage custodians and communities, in ways that reflect heritage places’ values and priorities. Crucially, this process happens locally, where heritage custodians and communities actively decide how scientific insights are interpreted, adapted, and integrated into their frameworks for understanding change and guiding action. 

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