Water and Heritage project: update!

ICOMOS Netherlands and the Centre for Global Heritage and Development received funding for the follow up of the Water and Heritage project. The funding comes from the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water and will be used for several purposes. It will be used to send a number of Dutch delegates to the Water as Heritage International Conference in Taiwan (May 27-31, 2019), to launch the publication ‘Adaptive strategies for water heritage’ and to create a related website. 

In 2012, ICOMOS Netherlands started to raise the importance of water-related heritage for a sustainable future. In September 2013 the international conference "Protecting deltas: heritage helps" was organized in Amsterdam, with the results of ‘the Statement of Amsterdam’ and the publication " Water & heritage; material, conceptual and spiritual connections”. 

In November 2016, ICOMOS NL in collaboration with the Centre for Global Heritage and Development organised the two-day international conference " Water and Heritage for the Future" that took place in Delft and Fort Vechten. This conference led to the publication 'Adaptive strategies for water heritage' that is expected to be published by Springer mid 2019.   At this conference the idea for an International Scientific Committee 'Water and Heritage' was born.  

In December 2017, at the General Assembly of ICOMOS, the ICOMOS Scientific Council officially requested ICOMOS NL to make a proposal for an International Scientific Committee on Water and Heritage. Subsequently, during the General Assembly, the Taiwan International Institute for Water Education offered to host an international conference on Water and Heritage in 2019 to assist the installment of the scientific committee. There is now a Program Committee with representatives from five continents and from both WATER (IWA, ICID, CIRAT) and various scientific committees of ICOMOS, an Advisory Board and a Concept Note.