El patrimonio cultural en las evaluaciones de impacto ambiental

Abstract

The different regional heritage laws and the draft reform of the Spanish Historical Heritage Law (Ministry of Culture and Sport 2021) reflect the evolution of heritage concepts, expanding the categories to be protected. This is the case, for example, of defensive and industrial architecture or the cultural landscape, which would not be understood without its environment and without the footprint and articulation of the territory left by the human being over time. The complexity of these heritage categories, made up of elements of a tangible and intangible nature, requires an understanding of their evolutionary processes from the early stages of the environmental assessment of projects. A proposal that has tried to alleviate the difficulties associated with this complexity is the tool drafted by the International Council of Museums and Sites called Heritage Impact Assessment, which aims to safeguard World Heritage sites. In this article we analyze the practice of Heritage Impact Assessments in Europe and its relationship with the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure of projects, through a bibliographic review, with the purpose of documenting the analyses published in this regard and making a critical assessment of its use, evaluating its advantages and disadvantages.