Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

Sandra PannellIndeed, Fowler concludes that the concept of ‘cultural landscape’, as a mechanism forinscribing World Heritage sites of a ‘non-monumental nature’, “has not in fact so far beenrealised” (2003: 45).This said, Aboriginal Traditional Owners of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area have longadvocated that the area in question be renominated as a cultural landscape or as a series ofintegrated cultural landscapes. Preliminary research undertaken by Titchen (1995) andHorsfall (2002) suggests that the Wet Tropics could be renominated as either a ‘continuing’(category 2b) or an ‘associative’ cultural landscape (category 3). It may also be possible toidentify specific sites within this landscape(s) as having ‘outstanding universal significance’on the basis of the six ‘cultural heritage’ criteria recognised under the Convention. AsLennon et al. point out, these sites could be seen as representing “selected concentrations ofmeaning or significance in a wider intellectual and cultural landscape context” (2001: 14).VAL D’ORCIA RECONSIDEREDGiven the historical associations of landscape, the concept of ‘cultural landscapes’ is bothoxymoronic and, at the same time, insightful. In the artistic tradition of the concept,landscapes depicted ‘natural’ vistas and settings devoid of humans. Even those spaces,both intentionally and subtly ‘shaped’ by human action and intervention were rendered‘natural’ in these pictorial depictions. This is apparent in Lorenzetti’s depiction of country andcity in the Siennese Republic. From the perspective of the city, the Tuscan countryside,including Val d’Orcia, constitutes a natural landscape. In this sense, Lorenzetti’s contrastingimages of country and city, nature and culture, resonate with contemporary constructions ofthe English countryside. As I discuss below, this particular view of nature, one in whichnature is dominated by or harnessed to human achievement, is quite different from myprevious discussions of nature as ‘wilderness areas’ or ‘biodiversity-rich’ regions.Speaking of the construction of the Norfolk countryside, Charles Frake observes that ‘manmade’features such as churches, villages and other objectively anthropogenic features ofthe landscape are readily identified as symbols of ‘cultural heritage’ (1996: 95). This part ofthe Norfolk countryside is regarded as a product of past activity that requires constantattention and intervention to “preserve and reconstruct what is valued in contemporaryimages of the past” (Frake 1996: 91). The values associated with this past are expressed interms of antiquity, authenticity, distinctiveness, and continuity. In conforming to theseimages of the past, the built environment of churches, villages, bridges, towers and roadsmaintains the aesthetic qualities of the countryside. As Frake points out, the spacesbetween these ostensibly human products, including fields, hedges, dikes and the expanseof open water known as the ‘Broads’, are unarguably part of a ‘natural landscape’, eventhough their ‘actual’ provenance may lie in “the hands of humans” (1995: 96).And so it also seems to be the case in the world’s latest ‘cultural landscape’ of Val d’Orcia.Similar to the aesthetics ascribed to the Norfolk countryside, the ICOMOS evaluation of thislandscape emphasises continuity with past practices and the associated lack of change inthis region. As stated in the Evaluation, the “comparative poverty and marginalisation of thearea over the [last] four centuries has had the effect of sustaining traditional land-usepatterns and structures” (ICOMOS 2004: 133). Indeed, these four centuries of neglect areidentified as contributing to the “high degree of authenticity” of the valley landscape(ICOMOS 2004: 135). Val d’Orcia also appears to have been little affected by recenttransformations to land management laws in Italy enacted since the 1960s (loc. cit.). Indeed,“the landscape seems to have created a strong cultural identity and people have chosen toremain on the land” (ICOMOS 2004: 132). As the ICOMOS evaluation concludes, the“landscape patterns have survived in the Val d’Orcia” (ibid: 133).66