By Douglas C. Comer, Ph.D.
President of ICOMOS-USA
This August 8, 2024, we sadly observe the one-year anniversary of the wildfire in Maui, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. It left many homeless in the former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina, and for many residents incinerated a lifetime of tangible objects associated with treasured memories. Lahaina left an impression on all who spent even a brief time there, a rare blend of historic townscape set on the edge of a magnificent ocean shoreline. It was a place filed with what Native Hawaiians term mana, and I suspect that all who visited could feel something special there. We struggle to recover what has not gone up in smoke. Remember these fires as a warning.
On November 21 – 22, 2024, we will convene the 2024 ICOMOS-USA Conference and Symposium that will focus on the underlying causes of the Maui fires, climate change. Try as we may to restore the damage suffered by climate change impacts, without addressing the humanly induced changes to the global environment that underlay them, we will soon reach a point where remediation is not possible. People in Australia and California as well as many other places in the world now live in a constant state of alert during an ever-lengthening fire season. We have seen that the fires in Canadian forests, polluting the atmosphere to heavily populated places to the south, are unstoppable once they have started. Hurricanes, typhoons, and even localized storms increase in frequency and intensity. Sea level rise threatens the lives, property, and economies of those living near ocean shores, and approximately one-third of the world’s population resides within sixty kilometers of a coastline.
Make plans now to listen to the latest research and thinking on ways to arrest climate change at our conference and symposium in November. Join the conversation and networking that will begin there. The venue will be the Sumner School in Washington, DC, directly across the street from the National Geographic Headquarters. We are honored to have as keynote speakers Dr. Patrick Gonzalez, former Assistant Director for Climate and Biodiversity of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and current Executive Director, UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity, and Prof. Gary E. Machlis, Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Clemson University and former Science Advisor to the Director, U.S. National Park Service (NPS). Prof. Machlis is author of the recently published book Sustainability for the Forgotten (University of Utah Pres, 2024).
Join us as we set the course for how we, as the United States National Committee of the International Council of Monuments and Sites and our supporting organization of World Heritage USA can mobilize our professionals, practitioners, and the public to combat climate change. We are, after all, charged with protecting those places that are dearest to the people of the world.