Cultural heritage

Preserving cultural heritage is an important part of our efforts to manage our social impact. Cultural heritage refers to places of archaeological, historical, cultural, artistic and religious significance. It also includes the preservation of unique environmental features, cultural knowledge and traditional lifestyles.

Our approach starts with considering how to avoid or minimise our impact on cultural heritage. This can involve carrying out archaeological assessments to inform, among other things, project design and site selection. We then develop chance-find procedures to deal with previously unknown heritage resources that may be discovered during construction. We train staff and contractors to make them fully aware of these resources to give them the authority to halt work if necessary.

In some instances, our efforts to protect cultural heritage involve distinct social and cultural groups that share ancestral ties to the land. In Brazil, we completed in 2022 a multi-year project to help 21 Quilombola communities record and reclaim their ancestral history and cultural heritage in their traditional territories. These lands were impacted by the discovery of oil and resultant worker migration in the 1970s and after.

Read more about our approach to cultural heritage at www.shell.com/sustainability/communities/working-with-communities.