Accounting for non-economic loss: climate displacement and the meaningful omission of the intangible

ABSTRACT

This article considers the relationship between cultural and climate policy. Specifically, it examines recent challenges in scholarly and policy efforts to conceptualize intangible heritage as an instance of non-economic loss resulting from climate-induced displacement. Illustrating the problem with cases from Latin America and the Caribbean, it surveys how international climate policy has come to adopt a loss and damage framework to address the costs of displacement. It goes on to focus upon cultural heritage as a frequently cited example of non-economic loss, first reviewing the evolution of heritage policy and then identifying a persistent inability to distinguish so-called intangible from tangible heritage. The article shows how a frequent tendency to treat intangible heritage as contingent upon and circumscribed by its tangible counterpart undermines efforts to come to terms with non-economic loss. Finally, it demonstrates how this conceptual fallacy is being carried over to scholarship and policy addressing climate-induced non-economic loss and highlights a need to better theorize the intangible dimensions of such loss.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage
• non-economic loss
• climate displacement

Acknowledgments

The author thanks CLALS staff for their assistance in managing this project, Eric Hershberg and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable editorial feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was conducted with the support of a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for a project carried out by American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies on ‘Religion and Environmentally-Induced Displacement in Latin America and the Caribbean’ during the period 2019-2022 (AU award #: A20-0028-001). Further project details can be found here: https://www.american.edu/centers/latin-american-latino-studies/religion-environmental-displacement.cfm.

Notes on contributors

Robert Albro

Robert Albro is Research Associate Professor at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. He received his PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago and has conducted ethnographic research and published on popular and indigenous politics along Bolivia’s urban periphery, with attention to the changing terms of indigenous identity and natural resource wars. Much of this work is summarized in his book, Roosters at Midnight: Indigenous Signs and Stigma in Local Bolivian Politics (School of Advanced Research Press, 2010). Dr. Albro also researches and regularly writes about domestic and international cultural policy, with respect to human rights, human security, science policy, and technology, including editing two volumes on culture and climate change. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Luce Foundation, and the American Council on Learned Societies, among others. He has also been a Fulbright scholar, and has held fellowships at the Carnegie Council, the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Albro has taught widely in higher education, including at Wheaton College (MA), George Washington University, and American University.