Academy of Conservation and Care for the Environment (ACCE) 2024

This initiative seeks to facilitate a transdisciplinary exchange of ideas, methodologies, and insights. Its goal is to offer a creative and innovative working atmosphere for developing networks of friendships and professional relationships with a view to future collaborations. By providing a platform for exchange amongst international participants, the program aspires to stimulate collaborative research, identify challenges, and lead into a co-creation process on site. The overarching goal is to drive progress in various scientific disciplines through the symbiotic exchange of different experiences and approaches to managing the historic built and natural environment, to share knowledge and best practices for the conservation of the intricate system of heritage values at Petra.

The inaugural ACCE 2024 will take place in Petra, Jordan. Petra is a model site for the challenges and opportunities of integrated environmental management. It holds meaning for diverse groups of people, from local inhabitants to visiting tourists. For this, it accommodates a broad range of intersecting values, from ecosystem services to evidence of past cultures. That is manifest in a complex tapestry of economic and regulatory frameworks that govern its management. The result is a fragile balance that is vulnerable to threats of increasing frequency or magnitude, such as flash floods or disruptions to the tourist economy. But these factors do not only mean that Petra is at risk from climate change, they also point to the role these places can play in exploring and promoting solutions to the crisis. The ethos of ACCE is that the places we care so deeply about can give human scale to the otherwise abstract scale of planetary change. We can use sites like Petra as a living lab, to teach each other how to care for the things we value. This will go beyond safeguarding the heritage of these places, by renewing their significance for our present times, and writing new chapters in the story of our possible futures.