A very warm welcome to Water Works: Activating Heritage for Sustainable Development!

How are water and heritage connected? Why would they help us achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals? People have built nature-based water systems for centuries and millennia, living in harmony with water, benefitting from it, defending against it as needed. With the industrial revolution, we have adopted large scale solutions that have allowed us to serve large populations, but that have also destroyed historical ecosystems. As we aim for a sustainable future, we have to carefully assess the spaces we live in and the institutions we have developed as they partly determine our future. At a time of climate change and sea-level rise we need to explore how water systems and our historic landscapes intersect. We need to explore how water management can learn from historic practices and how the heritage sector can benefit from a networked approach.

As you follow this course, we aim to inspire you to (re)think water systems and historic practices as places that can inspire the future, both through good and bad examples. We invite you to rethink the role that water spaces and stakeholders have played through time and the heritage they have left us with. We encourage you to rethink water management as a heritage practice, and heritage sites as opportunities for sustainable development. Building on our knowledge of Western Europe and our international network, connecting to our professional partners from water and heritage fields, we present you carefully chosen examples of Water Works from around the world. These are colored by our expertise but not meant to be comprehensive. We encourage you to build upon these examples, to complement and challenge them through your own experience.

Together we can build a field of action that (re)connects the water and heritage sectors for a more sustainable future. We can’t wait to start!

The Water Works course team