Building Resilience and Sustainability

Resources

Building Resilience: Practical Guidelines for the Sustainable Rehabilitation of Buildings in Canada

The document is a “sustainable building tool” that will enhance the readers understanding of the environmental benefits of heritage conservation and the strong inter-relationship between natural and built heritage conservation.

Building Resilience: Select Excerpts

Building Resilience: Practical Guidelines for the Retrofit and Rehabilitation of Buildings in Canada serves as a “sustainable building toolkit” that will enhance understanding of the environmental benefits of heritage conservation and of the strong interrelationship between natural and built heritage conservation. Intended as a useful set of best practices, the guidelines in Building Resilience can be applied to existing and traditionally constructed buildings as well as formally recognized heritage places.

Climate Change and National Historic Sites

Published by Canada's Historic Places; includes links to other resources.

Energy and Sustainability

Australia ICOMOS offers a toolkit of resources.

Green Guide to Heritage Conservation

This guide focuses on environmental sustainability. While we should all be doing our best to reduce personal consumption, buildings remain major consumers of energy and materials and are one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas.

Greening a Heritage Building

Literature review and case study synthesis on the benefits of heritage building conservation and how sustainability-focused strategies may be applied to enhance both environmental performance and heritage conservation.

Heritage & Sustainability

Vancouver Heritage Foundation; includes links to other resources and case studies.

Indigenous Peoples: Sustainable development and environmental change

In the face of global environmental change and its emerging challenges and unknowns, it is essential to have access to the best available information and knowledge. While science contributes significantly to understanding earth systems, social systems and their interactions, there is growing awareness that scientific knowledge alone is inadequate for solving the emerging environmental crises. The knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities – often referred to as local, indigenous or traditional knowledge – is now recognized as essential, alongside science, for developing effective and meaningful action world-wide.

Sustainability

National Trust for Canada; includes links to other resources.

Sustainable Development: World Heritage and Sustainable Development

Heritage was long absent from the mainstream sustainable development debate despite its crucial importance to societies and the wide acknowledgment of its great potential to contribute to social, economic and environmental goals. Based on a strong appeal from national and local stakeholders, the 2030 Agenda adopted by the UN General Assembly integrates, for the first time, the role of culture, through cultural heritage and creativity, as an enabler of sustainable development across the Sustainable Development Goals. World Heritage may provide a platform to develop and test new approaches that demonstrate the relevance of heritage for sustainable development.

Sustainability and the Built Environment: Forging a Role for Heritage Conservation

Now, more than ever before, the heritage field is faced with the need to qualify and quantify its fundamental contributions to society and sustainability. Whether through environmental, economic, or social benefits, the field must robustly demonstrate how it improves quality of life for communities. Realigning the goals of heritage conservation to ensure that they serve the greater good of the sustainability cause is an important first step.

Sustainable Development - Protecting our Past and our Future

Webpage published by Canada's Historic Places.

Funding

cleanBC: Better Homes

Better Homes helps British Columbians find rebates that save energy and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Vancouver Energy Retrofit Grant

Funded by the City of Vancouver and administered by Vancouver Heritage Foundation.

COVID-19 Resources for Heritage Sector

Visit our extensive list of webinars on-demand