Environmental Engineering Reference
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European landscape classifications towards a new focus on agricultural landscape
types, viewed as the product of history, underlining general aspects and similarities
between them at a European level.
Agricultural landscapes have also been examined under the framework of
international heritage policies, with the European Landscape Convention playing a
central role. Moreover, different European view points, as well as economic, social
and ecological trends, have been incorporated when considering the heritage of
these landscapes. From this, recommendations were drawn up as guidelines for
politicians, scientists and planners, aimed at making the wider population in
Europe more aware of their cultural heritage and hence better able to plan for their
future landscape.
4.4 Biocultural Diversity
As illustrated above, nature and culture are the pillars for holistic landscape
research. Ecological landscapes support wilderness within their geological, mor-
phological and ecological settings. However geology, topology and habitats are
just parts of what constitutes an ecological landscape, where man today continu-
ously intervenes. Yet nature and culture are mutually intertwined to create together
a particular character to the landscape, which goes beyond its underlying natural
and physical features. The human imprint is clearly marked in the cultural
landscape.
As Naveh ( 2011 ) pointed out, cultural landscape is the tangible meeting point
between nature and mind, and the conservation of its cultural assets should be an
integral part of holistic and dynamic landscape management. This kind of land-
scape is more than a puzzle of mosaics in repeated patterns of ecosystems, as it
retains a multidimensional organised landscape complexity.
Cultural landscape moreover can convey not just cultural but also spiritual
relationships with nature, and often reflects traditional techniques of sustainable
land use. It supports biological diversity in many regions of the world, but above
all supports cultural diversity. The protection of traditional cultural landscape, with
its tangible and intangible values, is therefore helpful in maintaining biocultural
diversity (Pungetti 2012 a).
Biocultural diversity, specifically, comprises the diversity of life manifested in
biology and ecology, as well as in cultures, languages and spiritual beliefs
(Fig. 4.5 ). These are interrelated within a 'complex socio-ecological adaptive
system' (Maffi and Woodley 2010 ).
The CO@ST Initiative 'Natural and Cultural Heritage of Coasts and Islands' at
CCLP, under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), supports biocultural
diversity with research on the conservation of natural and cultural heritage in
islands and coastal areas. This clearly requires a holistic interdisciplinary approach
able to provide prevention of, and responses to, natural and human hazards.
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