Culture in for and as Sustainable Development

Culture represents and creates wider relations between
human and nature, past, present and future,
the materialised and the imagined world. [16]
INTERACTION BETWEEN CULTURAL ACTIVITIES AND
SUSTAINABLE REGIONAL LANDSCAPE DEVELOPMENT
Many rural areas in Europe have undergone a sustained depopulation
of urban centres over a long period, whereas others have experienced
positive renewal through in-migration and population growth. Can culture
positively influence such developments?
The University of Bern undertook case studies in six protected areas
of four European countries within the framework of a project entitled
‘The cultural dimension of sustainable regional and landscape development
(SRLD)’. These studies revealed that culture is generally
a significant driver of SRLD, in that it promotes social cohesion and
can delay or even reverse depopulation of rural areas. One example is
the French National Regional Park (PNR) of Monts d’Ardèche, a region
boasting a high diversity of cultural activity, a high density of people
engaged in the cultural sector, and numerous cultural associations
and activities. Furthermore, there are many efforts to promote the area’s
rich cultural heritage, particularly its dry-stone terraces. This high
level of cultural activity is self-energising and works to attract further
inward migration of those interested in spaces for creative living. In
the case of the Ardèche, the diversity of cultural activities enhances
quality of life and adds value to the economy; culture can be seen to
play a significant role as a driver of SRLD.
Even a single flagship project can contribute to regional cultural revival
and consequent positive economic and social benefits, including
counteracting depopulation. The internationally-renowned ‘théâtre du
peuple’, for example, has endowed the village Bussang in the Vosges
with a prominence above and beyond commercial success: its vibrancy
and long tradition has become central to regional identity. The newer,
but already widely acclaimed Theater Origen in Switzerland’s Parc Ela
may engender a similar effect over time.
These examples demonstrate that culture can contribute significantly
to sustainable regional and landscape development and can also positively
influence the demographic development in rural areas.
(Bettina Scharrer, Marion Leng, Thomas Hammer)
www.cde.unibe.ch/Pages/Project/6/66/The-cultural-dimension-ofsustainable-regional-and-landscape-development-SRLD.aspx
Culture thus becomes the matrix for particular
ways of life. In this sense, culture is more
than a descriptive or analytical tool, and offers
an ideal of doing things well, of culture
as cultivation and sustaining life, but without
making things well at the cost of something
or somebody else. Culture in this approach
refers to a worldview, a cultural system guided
by intentions, motivations, ethical and
moral choices, rooted in values that drive our
individual and collective actions [17], and to a
process and communication of transformation
and cultural change. This makes it possible
to think of sustainability and sustainable
development as processes, ongoing and inthe-making,
not as fixed states.
Sustainabilities imply making connections
between people and the worlds they inhabit
and use. In this approach, ecoculture is
deeply related to social learning by working
with place-conscious and place-responsive
teaching, sharing and learning, and engaging
humans in discussions of what kind of world
we want to live in now and in the future. This is
applicable in policymaking and even in wider
politics: engaging citizens in discussions of
what kind of world should be a basic premise
of public policies. Culture refers here not
to particular types of knowledge, but to fundamental
new processes of social learning
that are nourishing, healing, and restorative.
Sustainability exists thus as a process of
community-based thinking that is pluralistic
where culture represents both problem and
possibility, form and process, and concerns
those issues, values and means whereby a
society or community may continue to exist.
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