ICLEI Member Hamburg (Germany), alongside three other European cities, has established an individual local work plan that will guide their work on strengthening the resilience of local cultural heritage. All four work plans define objectives, strategies, actions and corresponding indicators of success. Each local work plan is supported by a team of local partners, which is the result of stakeholder analysis undertaken by city staff to identify, engage and mobilise a core group in support of locally-defined objectives.

The cities were supported in this process with a common framework designed by ICLEI Europe, as well as a facilitated workshop in September 2020 where other partners provided feedback on the draft objectives, strategies and indicators. Defining (and refining) these components, as well as mobilising a core team of local stakeholders to support their implementation, has proven crucial in order to establish a clear, robust and credible pathway for local action.

Each local work plan hinges on an overall aim that informs the detailed design of the plan. Hamburg, for example, aimed to integrate climate change adaptation into management of their UNESCO World Heritage Site, Speicherstadt und Kontorhausviertel, including improving monitoring of impacts on built fabric, visitors and the local community, as well as increasing community awareness.

These efforts are being taken on via the ARCH project, in which ICLEI Europe is a partner. In addition to Hamburg, the cities of Bratislava (Slovakia), Camerino (Italy), and Valencia (Spain) are also project partners, all of whom have now also published their local work plans for cultural heritage resilience.

To learn from these cities' work, explore their local work plans, and review the methodology behind them, click here.