Cultural and environmental heritage amid conflicts, climate change and overexploitation: an unsustainable and often underestimated cost for the future

Unfortunately, today the effects of conflicts fought with increasingly devastating weapons are added to the climate vulnerability and the dangers of excessive exploitation of environmental resources. Alongside the dead and wounded in the disastrous toll of wars, there are other silent victims: monuments, landscapes, urban and building fabrics, environmental ecosystems, water and natural resources of territories and places. However, safeguarding and protecting monuments and testimonies, not only material but belonging to the cultural space of universal and intergenerational value of humanity, can represent a significant tool for strengthening the resilience and ability to survive of peoples and communities. In our present SDG16 Peace, justice and solid institutions, of the 2030 Agenda seems like a utopia but pursuing it with tenacity is the main hope for the future of humanity.