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Petra
Places
Explore our cultural and natural heritage sites across the globe
Preserving Legacies is partnered with 10 cultural and natural heritage sites in 2023. These places of cultural significance, explored below, represent different heritage typologies, like archeological sites and living agricultural landscapes, and different climate threats, like sea level rise and extreme heat. While this diverse first cohort spans continents, cultures, and climate impacts, they all share a deep commitment to learn, connect, and build something new together.
Primary Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, our two primary sites will go through a more robust program to link climate science and site conservation by enabling access to locally downscaled climate change models and organize a community-led workshop of the sites’ climate vulnerability as well as impacts on local communities.
Cadet Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, eight cadet sites have been chosen to fully engage in climate heritage training and a peer-to-peer learning experience. Site custodians from these sites will shadow the full process at Petra and the Rice Terraces, including attending their workshops, to better prepare for their own assessments in 2024.
Jordan
Petra
Petra is a unique and superlative relic landscape. Founded by the Nabateans, the site was later occupied by both the Romans and the Byzantines. Best known for its outstanding monuments carved in stone including the great treasury, the site also contains sophisticated water harvesting and management systems which were developed by the Nabateans which allowed their civilization to thrive in such a challenging environment. The site was an important regional crossroads where eastern and western traditions met and is now visited by nearly 1 million people a year. The site is vulnerable to erratic weather and flash floods in particular which pose a threat to both tourists and the iconic monuments and landscape.