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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: H48-03. To panel H48.

Title of paper:

Author:

Olufemi Adetunji (University of Newcastle, Australia).

Long abstract paper:
Climate change is regarded as one of the significant threats to places and sites of historical and cultural significance in communities contributing to the increased focus on mitigation, preparedness, adaptation and resilience to the impacts of the changes in climate through policy and research. The Nigeria Climate Change Policy Response and Strategy, for instance, adopted in 2012 to drive national response to multi-faceted impacts of climate change and improve climate action and support to sustainable transition to low carbon, climate-resilient and high economic growth communities. Various scholars and professionals, however, agreed that cultural heritage offers immense opportunities to leverage on to drive community-based actions and improve adaptation to climate change impacts. This paper, therefore, examines issues influencing integrating cultural heritage into policies and research on the impacts of climate change in Nigeria. The policies addressing climate change across national, state and institutional levels were analysed to understand the trends, themes and influence on cultural heritage. Also, key stakeholders in climate change policy planning and research participated the semi-structured interviews to understand the challenges influencing integrating cultural heritage in policies and research addressing climate change in Nigeria. Findings revealed technological, social, institutional and economic challenges to integrating cultural heritage in climate change policies and research. The study therefore conclude that improving level of awareness on the potentials of cultural heritage as soft power for creation of climate action will influence inter-relationship between climate change policies and research in Nigeria.

Keywords: climate action, climate change adaptation, development policy, heritage value, policy-oriented research.