The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

2. Landscape as a meeting ground
agreements, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar) and the World
Heritage Convention, were signed more than 30 years ago. In 1992, the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted at the Earth Summit. But until very recently, there
were no international landscape agreements.
Landscape comes in from the cold
Things are changing now. This is because several of the characteristics of landscape are
particularly relevant to the search for more sustainable ways of living. These are:
Landscape is universal. It is found everywhere that people and nature have interacted, in
remote places, in farmed countryside, even in villages, towns and cities. It needs to be
stressed that a concern for landscape should not be confined to what is conventionally
considered as the most beautiful or “least spoilt” landscapes.
It is dynamic. Landscapes inevitably change and evolve over time, in response to natural
processes and to the changing needs and activities of people. Landscape cannot be
‘frozen’.
It is hierarchical. Like a Russian doll, a large landscape area contains smaller landscape
units within it; they in turn contain still smaller ones; and so on.
It is holistic – or it is nothing: any attempt to understand it as a wholly natural, wholly
historic or entirely physical phenomenon is doomed. It cannot be understood or managed
except through an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach, which embraces all its eco -
logical, economic, cultural and social components.
These qualities are all very relevant to sustainable development, which can only be achieved
by connecting (or reconnecting) people and nature, and which demands multi-disciplinary
approaches. In this sense, landscape is not only an environmental resource in its own right but
also a medium through which to pursue sustainable development.
Such thinking is well expressed in the preamble to the world’s first landscape treaty, the
European Landscape Convention (ELC), which came into force in March 2004. 5 It is also a
driver behind the themes of this chapter, the growing importance given by IUCN to Category V
protected areas – or Protected Landscapes/Seascapes – and the emergence of the ‘Cultural
Landscapes’ category under the World Heritage Convention.
The connection is very clear when we look at the types of landscape action that are at the
core of the ELC. Indeed, the three-fold classification provided by Article 1 of the convention
offers an excellent general typology that is relevant in all parts of the world:
‘Landscape protection’, defined by the ELC as “actions to conserve and maintain the
significant or characteristic features of a landscape justified by its heritage value derived
from its natural configuration and/or human activity;”
‘Landscape management’, meaning “from a perspective of sustainable development, to
ensure the regular upkeep of all landscape, so as to guide and harmonise changes which
are brought about by social, economic and environmental processes;”
5
See Council of Europe web site: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/cadreprincipal.htm
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