Heritage under Siege: Comparative Perspectives on Vandalism, Climate Change and Global Inequality in Nigeria and Iran

Heritage sites, often celebrated for their cultural significance and historical depth, are increasingly under threat from overlapping pressures of climate change, insecurity, vandalism, urban development, and global inequality. A comparative study of the Sukur Cultural Landscape in Nigeria and other heritage sites in Iran reveals that these challenges are not merely environmental or political but also deeply intertwined with issues of memory, power, ownership, and survival. The research, combining qualitative fieldwork, interviews, observations, document analysis, and critical discourse analysis, argues that heritage protection cannot be reduced to technical conservation alone; it requires ecological care, cultural justice, and more democratic participation. Local communities play a crucial role as both witnesses to heritage loss and custodians whose knowledge challenges the limitations of global heritage regimes.

Mba, O. J., & Ghodsi, S. B. (2026). Heritage under Siege: Comparative Perspectives on Vandalism, Climate Change and Global Inequality in Nigeria and Iran. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 10(8), 2119–2135. https://doi.org/10.47772/ijriss.2026.100800148