The Future of the Past
When Cultural Heritage Meets Climate Change
Thijs Weststeijn author Liz Waters translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Polity Press
Published:5th Jun '26
Should be back in stock very soon
As the wooden piles under Amsterdam begin to rot, water levels rise in Venice. The 4,500-year-old ruins of Mohenjo-daro flood in Pakistan. Compaction of peat soil in northern England is causing Hadrian's Wall to collapse. The bricks of excavated Babylon are exploding as a result of increasing salt levels. Melting permafrost in Siberia is endangering the ancient burial mounds of the Scythian civilization. In the US, hurricanes have partially destroyed the heritage of New Orleans and Puerto Rico, while the 2019 wildfires forced the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to close.
The climate crisis is threatening historical heritage all over the world, with higher temperatures, more storms and fires and, of course, rising sea levels. Monuments, buildings, inner cities and cultural landscapes are at risk, and museums such as the Louvre have already started relocating parts of their collections to climate-proof storage facilities. Written by a highly regarded art historian, The Future of the Past addresses this urgent issue and asks us to include the fate of beauty in our conversations on climate change.
Extreme weather means we have to approach history in new ways. Historical heritage now confronts us not only with the past, but also the future.
"Thijs Weststeijn's The Future of the Past isn't quite canned soup splattered on Van Gogh's Sunflowers, but its message is every bit as urgent: cultural heritage is under threat from climate change. With a sure grasp of climate science and the policy landscape, Weststeijn takes us on a thoughtful tour of the cultural sites – and the preservation theories – that climate change is putting to the test in the Netherlands and around the globe. He shows that we do, in fact, have tools to protect cultural heritage at our disposal: age-old non-Western practices, new digital technologies, and refined reconstruction techniques. If the facts of climate science alone fail to motivate adequate climate action, perhaps the prospect of losing our shared cultural heritage will."
Simon Richter, Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of Germanic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"Weststeijn's volume is an eye-opening account of how the climate is putting historical heritage at risk on a global scale. As institutions are tasked with adapting to a rapidly changing world, we will need to take necessary measures to protect our collections. For curators and all supporters of culture, this book lays the essential foundations on how to approach preserving the past."
Lizzie Marx, Curator of Dutch and Flemish Art, National Gallery of Ireland
"This book is so well written it is hard to put down. Thijs Weststeijn shows us that, the way things are going, climate change is not only going to wipe out species and make wide areas of the globe uninhabitable, it is also going to destroy many of the most beautiful products of the world's cultures. He offers no false hopes but constructive suggestions, and a mass of fascinating detail which allows us to gauge the scale of the problems we need to address."
Paul Taylor, Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition, University of London
"Heritage experts have spent years documenting the threats posed by mass tourism, war and commerce, but Weststeijn says they have been late to chart the damage wrought by a warming climate."
Pilita Clark, Financial Times
ISBN: 9781509567843
Dimensions: 223mm x 147mm x 30mm
Weight: 454g
240 pages