What happens when a technical risk prevention system is recognized as a “living tradition”? This talk explores the unconventional recognition of Avalanche Risk Management (ARM) on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2018. Unlike the identity-based or folkloric practices usually associated with “living traditions,” ARM demonstrates how heritage can be used as a forward-looking resource for climate adaptation, environmental governance, and sustainable development. Drawing on ethnographic research, I illustrate how Swiss heritage officials—trained as ethnologists—creatively navigated institutional procedures to frame ARM as heritage, thereby reinterpreting the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in innovative ways. Their practices reveal how bureaucratic routines can become spaces of creativity, driven by ethical values and political aspirations. This process occurred at various levels: locally, with commissions in Wallis challenging folkloric stereotypes; nationally, where the Swiss Office for Culture linked heritage to sustainability agendas; and internationally, where Swiss delegates promoted this vision in UNESCO debates.

The case prompts important questions about the tensions between expert-led and community-led approaches, the role of bureaucracy as a site of creativity rather than mere routine, and the broader implications of redefining heritage as a political and moral endeavor.