Tuesday Sep 29, 2026
Tuesday Sep 29, 2026
Tuesday, 29 September 2026 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
UNESCO’s new Culture × El Niño 2026–2027 campaign warns that drought, wildfire, torrential rain, flooding and cyclones can damage cultural and natural heritage, museums, collections and living heritage. Its emphasis is preparedness before disaster, including readiness checklists, training and emergency funding.
For Sri Lanka, this is not only a cultural question. Heritage supports tourism, local livelihoods, identity and economic activity. When a heritage site or cultural practice is disrupted, the loss can travel through an entire local economy.
Businesses understand continuity planning: identify critical functions, map dependencies, create backups and define recovery priorities. Heritage institutions need the same operational discipline.
A temple, museum, archive, historic district or traditional craft ecosystem has dependencies too. It may rely on specialist custodians, climate-sensitive collections, transport access, power, water, digital records, community knowledge and visitor revenue.
If these dependencies are not mapped before a flood, fire or extreme-weather event, recovery becomes slower and more expensive.
Heritage preparedness should therefore be treated as an investment rather than an emergency expense.
Heritage supports tourism, local livelihoods, identity and economic activity. When a heritage site or cultural practice is disrupted, the loss can travel through an entire local economy
A practical model would rank assets by vulnerability and recovery difficulty, establish emergency decision authority, digitise essential records, identify temporary storage or relocation options, train staff and communities, and connect cultural institutions with national disaster-management systems.
This does not commercialise heritage. It recognises that continuity is part of stewardship.
Sri Lanka’s heritage has survived centuries because communities continuously maintained it. Modern risk management can strengthen that tradition rather than replace it.
Resilience is not reconstruction. It is the capacity to prevent an emergency from becoming a permanent cultural loss
The important shift is from asking how much it costs to protect heritage before a disaster to asking how much cultural and economic value becomes unrecoverable if preparation begins only afterward.
Resilience is not reconstruction. It is the capacity to prevent an emergency from becoming a permanent cultural loss.
(The author based in UAE is a researcher specialising in Security, Heritage, Risk Management, and Control Room Operations)
