The Nile Delta has been suffering from complex environmental hazards caused by climate change and human-induced evolvements, which have led to adverse impacts on national food security. An unfavourable nexus between solid waste management issues and extreme hydrological events is examined mainly through extensive field investigation and literature research, which is an emerging issue affecting food safety and security whilst still being overlooked so far. The findings not only reveal the significance of the emerging issue but also support our proposed recommendations in the policy/legislation and technology sphere. This interdisciplinary research employs a holistic lens that covers diverse perspectives, including systemic problems, wastewater treatment, and environmental neuroscience, to explore the relationship between food, climate change, water management, and waste pollution, and to achieve novel discoveries for the practical adaptations of Egypt’s challenges.

Currently, there is a lack of substantial integration in considering both natural and heritage environment with respect to managing change in either heritage conservation or environment protection. The failure of achieving harmonious environmental management can hence often be seen, leading to conflicting situation or even irreversible loss. This study therefore seeks to develop a framework/methodology for 'Harmonious Environmental Management of Cultural Heritage and Nature (i.e. water environment particularly)', to simultaneously mitigate the existing knowledge gaps in both domains, through a holistic view that is scarce in literature. The study primarily examines the issues from values-based theory, minimal intervention theory, the dichotomy between culture and nature, and the conduct of Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA), all play critical roles in managing change whilst they are either narrow in considerations or confined to some extents, leading to the inadequacy in application and the incapability to catch up with the latest revolution of heritage conservation that features broadening the lens to people and nature, rather than merely the fabric. The research proposes some novel perspectives and approaches, through the explorations from the sphere of philosophy, theory, practice, to application sphere, presented respectively as four chapters. Moreover, it covers different temporal (past, present and future) and spatial (regional and global) scales, as follows: 1) for the past, the regional pluralism of heritage conservation is echoed. It explores the philosophy of ancient Chinese regarding the interaction between people, nature and built world, as well as accommodating changes, as the underlying core concept-harmony-for the rest chapters; 2) for the present, a more comprehensive intervention approach featuring matrix thinking covering heritage, nature and people sphere is developed. Followed by examining the emerging issues in conducting HIA that has troubled the world: 3) the incompatibility of HIA within Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which portrays four patterns of statutory system from global lens, and proposes a HIA approach in response to the troublesome discourse; and 4) for the future, a participatory decision-making support method is developed for environmental planning involving water cultural heritage and nature, which is also a manifestation of the applicability of the proposed matrix approach. The integrated method tackles a real dilemma case in a historic town of Taiwan, with a scarce function of scenario forecasting to address the condition of the context. This part is presented as a more pragmatic and quantitative complement to the conceptual developments in the previous parts, for rounding out the whole exploration towards harmonious change management.

After a long-standing debate of pluralism in heritage conservation, the global practice has just started to broaden its view from material to people and even to nature, leading to the potential of a more comprehensive understanding and harmony between these spheres. Notwithstanding that the shift from material to people and then to nature seemingly looks like the only path in the modern heritage conservation movement to achieve the foregoing goals, in fact, there exist some regional cultures that originally featured particular views on human–nature harmony. This paper hence highlights the regional difference in heritage with a focus on China of ancient times, which unfolds the particular perspective emphasising the unity of human and nature. With a case study of Huaqing Palace of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), the research is expected to be the first attempt to rediscover that the four schools of thought, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and I Ching, had jointly formed a “wisdom” system of the ancient Han Chinese in shaping the idea of cultural heritage, as well as the idea of heritage conservation, which were inherited by modern Chinese without knowing and recognising it. The paper, therefore, argues that without understanding and acknowledging the significance of the ancient Han Chinese’s particular view on nature and the universe formed by the four schools of thought behind the material, it is not likely to protect and promote comprehensively their heritage value, such that the importance of cultural diversity will be just rhetoric.

Multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods have shown advantages in supporting decision-making with problems that confront conflicting objectives. However, current applications to complex environmental problems featuring the dynamic social sphere, particularly problems involving cultural heritage and nature, have yet to substantially reflect this. The dynamic social sphere reflects the demand for scenario forecasting in decision-making support. This knowledge gap has not been addressed sufficiently in MCDA research. A participatory MCDA method is hence proposed as a merger with Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) as the scenario forecasting. The MCDA is then carried out to tackle a complex environmental problem caused by traditional food production in a historic town, Daxi in Taiwan. The result reveals a remarkable willingness to support this issue of a historically significant industry causing detriment to environment (with WTP estimate of 128,700,000 USD from the public) and suggests a plan that applies multiple policy instruments rather than following a potentially adverse polluter-pays principle. This manifests the authors’ argument that recognition of heritage significance has dramatically affected selection of policy instruments and provides a critical recommendation to the local government which has struggled to find solutions. The proposed MCDA also highlights its participatory aspect for addressing issues involving cultural heritage, supported by several key steps, in particular the intervention-impact value tree building, the scenario forecasting and the sensitivity analysis.