Earthquakes and afterlives: Heritage conservation and seismicity

Abstract

Earthquakes are a force of nature and a global phenomenon. Public attention appropriately focuses on the loss of human life in the acute wake of serious tremor and then shifts to the built environment – to the destruction of notable heritage sites and artifacts, along with the erasure of quotidian material touchstones. This chapter explores the significance of heritage in New Zealand and the powers and resources accorded through statutory and non-statutory frameworks and citizen action. Although heritage is valued and protected to varying degrees, measures are perennially underfunded and undermined by a prevailing private property ethos. Natural disaster and subsequent initiatives to mitigate risk and human vulnerability (escalating building standards, insurance industry priorities and heightened public policy responses) bring fresh challenges. It concludes by arguing for the need for a formula that recognises the costs to current generations in securing inheritance of those following.