The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
designation of Category V Protected Landscapes, the natural environment, biodiversity con -
serva tion, and ecosystem integrity have been the primary emphases. In contrast, the emphasis
in World Heritage Cultural Landscape designation has been on human history, continuity of
cultural traditions, and social values and aspirations (Mitchell and Buggey, 2001). As Adrian
Phillips further notes in his chapter, “outstanding universal value” is a fundamental criterion in
recognising a World Heritage Cultural Landscape, while the emphasis in Category V Protected
Landscapes is on sites of national, or sub-national significance.
Other protected area designations can play an important role in protecting landscapes,
although their management objectives differ. One example is Category VI Managed Resource
Protected Areas (see Appendix 3), which shares with Category V an emphasis on sustainable
use of natural resources. However, they differ in that Category V protected areas involve
landscapes that typically have been modified extensively by people over time, Category VI
protected areas emphasise areas with predominantly unmodified natural systems, to be man -
aged so that at least two-thirds remain that way (Phillips, 2002).
Drawing on Brazil’s experience with extractive reserves, Claudio Maretti argues that
landscape protection must be viewed in the local context – social, cultural and natural – and that
for certain lived-in landscapes the Category VI designation may be more appropriate. In the
Brazilian Amazon, for example, communities established Category VI extractive reserves in
order to protect their lived-in, working landscapes.
Another important example considered here is the Biosphere Reserve designation, an
instrument of UNESCO’s Man in the Biosphere (MaB) programme, dedicated to sustainable
development and the conservation of biodiversity, as well as the support of environmental
education, research, and the monitoring of the most important natural areas of the world. The
chapter by Clayton F. Lino and Marilia Britto de Moraes considers experience from the Mata
Atlantica Biosphere Reserve to explore how this designation supports large-scale conservation
and, at the same time, helps to sustain traditional landscapes and seascapes in Brazil’s coastal
zone.
Central to the protected landscape approach, though not expressed in any formal designa -
tion, are the array of strategies that indigenous and local communities have been using for
millennia to protect land and natural and cultural resources important to them. Long ignored by
governments, and not included in the accounting of official protected areas, communityconserved
areas are now receiving growing attention in the protected areas field. In their
chapter Edmund Barrow and Neema Pathak introduce community-conserved areas, which they
define as
…modified and natural ecosystems, whether human-influenced or not, and which contain
significant biodiversity values, ecological services, and cultural values, that are vol -
untarily conserved by communities, through customary laws and institutions.
Community-conserved areas have long played a role in how communities all over the world
care for the landscapes they inhabit (Borrini-Feyerabend, Kothari and Oviedo, 2004).
Finally, private land conservation tools (such as conservation easements and management
agreements) and public-private partnerships play an important role in protecting landscapes, as
discussed in several of the chapters in this volume.
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