The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community
demographic pressures and climate change are matters to be addressed by national govern -
ments or the international community. But it is also widely recognised that a new approach is
needed to the planning and management of protected areas themselves. The main elements of
this have been captured in a “new paradigm” (see Table 1).
The new paradigm provides support for Category V protected areas. In most respects, they
match well the profile in the far right column of Table 1. For example, Category V protected
areas must, by their nature, be run with a range of environmental, social and economic
objectives in mind, and managed in close co-operation with local people.
World Heritage Cultural Landscapes
The World Heritage Convention was adopted in 1972 and is now one of the most widely
supported international agreements on the environment. It provides for the identification and
protection of the world’s heritage of outstanding universal value. The convention combines
two ideas: cultural heritage and natural heritage, and in operating the convention two separate
streams of activity have developed. The cultural one is served by ICOMOS (and ICCROM) and
the natural one by IUCN. The result has been two sets of World Heritage sites: cultural ones and
natural ones (there are also “mixed” sites, being those that were inscribed under both natural
and cultural criteria).
Over the years, the sharp separation and differentiation of these two approaches has been
found less and less helpful in understanding the world’s heritage and its needs for protection
and management. As the foregoing discussions on landscape and the development of the new
paradigm of protected areas have made clear, the separation of the cultural and natural world –
of people from nature – makes little sense. Indeed it makes it more difficult to achieve
sustainable solutions to complex problems in the real world in which people and their
environment interact in many ways. It ignores the well documented evidence that many
so-called wilderness areas have in fact been modified by people over long periods of time. It
ignores evidence that in many areas disturbance of natural systems can be good for nature; and
that many rural communities have shown great respect for nature. It overlooks the rich genetic
heritage of crops and livestock associated with farming in many parts of the world. Moreover,
excluding people from the land (or water) on grounds of nature conservation often meets with
resistance from local communities; collaborative approaches are needed instead. Finally,
nature conservation has to be concerned with the lived-in landscape because it cannot be
achieved sustainably within ‘islands’ of strict protection surrounded by areas of environmental
neglect.
As a result, IUCN, and the nature conservation movement generally, now recognise far more
than they did only 10 or 20 years ago the importance of 1) the humanized, lived-in landscapes
as well as ‘natural’ environments, and 2) the cultural dimension to the conservation of nature. It
is thus easy to see in general terms why IUCN has taken an interest in the development and
implementation of the World Heritage Cultural Landscapes, and in bringing the cultural and
natural worlds closer together (see Rssler in this volume). Through a former Chair of its then
Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas, the late Bing Lucas, IUCN helped to draw
up the recommendations on Cultural Landscapes from La Petite Pierre which were adopted by
the World Heritage Committee at Santa Fe in 1992 (see Appendix 4).
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