The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
A shepherd tends his flock
in a mountainous region of
Central Slovakia.
Jessica Brown
natural and cultural wealth for now and future generations. More specifically, it can be defined
as “efforts to create, nurture and enable responsibility in landowners and resource users to
manage and protect land and its natural and cultural heritage” (Brown and Mitchell, 1999).
Stewardship taps our basic human impulse to care for our home and its surroundings – be it a
parcel of land, a neighbourhood, or an historic monument, or the larger area of a watershed,
mountain range or stretch of coast line. It builds on our sense of obligation to other people: our
family, our community, and future generations. By fostering individual and community re spon si -
bility, stewardship puts con ser vation in the hands of the people most affected by it.
The protected landscape approach engages local com munities in stewardship of land scapes by
reinforcing individ ual and community responsibility for resource management. It builds on
existing institutional responsi bilities; and encourages flexible arrangements for management of
resources, including collaborative management agreements and the range of private land
stewardship tools.
New directions in protected areas
Protected areas are the cornerstone of conservation policy, an inter-generational legacy of the
planet’s most valuable assets and special places. Covering over 10% of the earth’s surface, the
global estate includes over 100,000 formally protected areas. As eloquently expressed in the
Durban Accord, a statement from the 3,000 participants in the V th World Parks Congress,
protected areas are:
Those places most inspirational and spiritual, most critical to the survival of species and
ecosystems, most crucial in safeguarding food, air and water, most essential in stabiliz -
ing climate, most unique in cultural and natural heritage and therefore most deserving of
humankind’s special care.
The roots of the protected area idea go back thousands of years – long before governments
created national parks – to the conservation regimes that human societies have been devising
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