Climate risk assessment of China’s Cultural World Heritage highlights urgent need for adaptation

This research combines expert elicitation on heritage attribute vulnerability with long-term and extreme climate change projections to estimate future climate change risks for 148 heritage sites and their buffer zones within 39 Cultural World Heritage properties in China. Of relevance to the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, 21 (54%) sites are located in urban or peri-urban areas and the remaining 18 are distributed across rural and mountainous regions.

Over half of the sites are located in urban or peri‑urban areas, with nine urban sites facing extreme risk by 2100 regardless of scenario. These findings underscore the urgent need for adaptation across properties and buffer zones and offer guidance for scheduling site‑specific interventions.