Futures and foresight of Croatian cultural heritage

Abstract

In today's challenging time of political instability and climate change, the question of what to expect from the future is asked more frequently than ever. This question occurs in all segments of society, including those segments related to cultural heritage. When we mention the term ‘cultural heritage’, the first thing that we associate with it relates to the past, our identity, to legacies or to something we have inherited. We identify it mostly with something valuable and something that we must protect. In this paper the protection of cultural heritage will be moved to the future. The main question asked is whether current views on heritage preservation/protection will be valid in the future. This paper is primarily about anticipating the future, and not predicting it, by showing the methods and techniques that identify processes that could affect the future of heritage protection and management in the Republic of Croatia. Research and definition of trends have been carried out, in accordance with which this paper anticipates possible changes in the approach of people towards cultural heritage conditioned by social, economic, technical, ecological and political trends. Based on established trends, several scenarios are developed with certainties and uncertainties. Scenarios lead us to a consensus about what kind of future we want, and they point out the possible problems facing the modern world and their impact on heritage.