While the negative impacts of climatechange on urban areas are well-known and widely discussed,its implicit impacts on historic downtowns have not beenstudied as extensively. In recent years, cultural heritageconservation and valorization have increasingly becomedrivers of local economic development. Many projectssupported by the World Bank in this field help leveragecultural heritage for economic development while developinginfrastructure and services for residents and enhancing thelivability of cities. The World Bank has also been veryactive in addressing climate change risks and increasingresiliency of urban areas. This paper is an effort to mergethese two critical agendas. The paper investigates theimpacts of climate change on 237 world heritage cities (WHC)and provides an overview of the geographic distribution ofthese cities around the globe. It discusses the importanceof historic downtowns and provides various options availableto the governments of these cities to address riskmitigation and adaptation to climate change. Further, itprovides examples of WHC which have taken action to addressvulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change. Thisreport is organized in following five sections: section onepresents an overview of WHC, geographic distribution, andthe growth of the urban agglomerations to which they belong.Section two presents the natural hazard risks and climatechange impacts facing WHC, their location on the coastlineor interior, and their rank in terms of level ofvulnerability. Section three outlines the characteristicsthat historic cities have in terms of carbon emissions andpotential for climate change mitigation. Section fourdiscusses the sources of financing which WHC may turn to inorder to address climate change mitigation and adaptation.Section five presents the climate change adaptation andmitigation action plans being implemented in the WHC ofParis, Tunis, Edinburgh, Mexico City, Hue, and Quito.
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