Two decades of research on climate change impacts and UNESCO World Cultural Heritage: A comprehensive scoping review

Climate change constitutes an escalating, systemic, and transboundary threat to cultural heritage, undermining both its material integrity and associated socio-cultural values while exposing persistent limitations in translating international climate-policy commitments into effective heritage-management practice. This study conducts a scoping review of reviews to synthesize two decades of scholarship on climate change and tangible immovable cultural heritage and examine its relevance to UNESCO's climate action agenda. Following the PRISMA-ScR protocol, a Scopus search identified 244 records, of which 23 review-based studies met the eligibility criteria, complemented by one official UNESCO report. Beyond a conventional state-of-the-art assessment, the study develops an integrative analytical structure that organises fragmented scholarship into one foundational heritage–climate domain and four emerging adjacent domains, examined in relation to UNESCO's World Heritage Climate Action Goals for 2030. Its main contribution lies in synthesizing dispersed knowledge into a thematic–conceptual structure that identifies research gaps, clarifies relationships between scientific evidence and climate-action priorities, and guides future research. The review positions climate–heritage research as a strategic knowledge domain requiring integration across risk assessment, adaptation planning, knowledge generation, and governance processes. The findings reveal significant conceptual, methodological, geographical, and operational asymmetries. Research remains largely focused on the physical impacts of climate change on tangible immovable cultural heritage, whereas non-material and socio-cultural dimensions associated with such heritage, community and Indigenous/local knowledge systems, mitigation strategies, and implementation-oriented approaches remain comparatively underdeveloped. Additional challenges include weak methodological standardisation, inconsistent risk frameworks, limited long-term monitoring data, and insufficient incorporation of future climate scenarios. While advances have been achieved in climate-risk assessment, adaptation planning, and capacity building, climate mitigation remains underrepresented. These findings highlight the need for integrated, transferable, and governance-oriented frameworks capable of informing resilience-oriented heritage management, climate policy, and future research agendas.