Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4.7 The Right to Landscape
Because of the strong interaction of landscape values with great diversity, i.e.
natural, cultural, social and spiritual, there are tensions and conflicts between the
parties involved. Native Americans for example, claim the right to worship and
protect the genius loci and the earth in their sacred places, whilst other citizens
claim the right to mine and extract natural resources there, or to climb mountains
that are considered sacred for the natives. Although this happens on public land,
indigenous people, who have lived in those landscapes from time immemorial,
claim to keep their land in balance by worshipping. In fearing careless destruction
by society, they feel deprived of religious freedom and their right to landscape.
Scientists are therefore asking for landscape rights to be respected. The RtL
Initiative 'The Right to Landscape' under the International Federation of Land-
scape Architects (IFLA) and Amnesty International has been set up at CCLP with
this goal, proposing a novel approach for an international multidisciplinary aca-
demic discourse associated with landscape and human rights. RtL is based on the
premise that landscape is full of meanings, and comprises an underpinning com-
ponent for ensuring the well-being and dignity of people (Egoz et al.
2011
). The
aim is to collectively define the concept of 'The Right to Landscape' and provide a
body of knowledge that supports human rights.
The 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, celebrated in
December 2008, called for a reflection on ethical human dilemmas and for a
critical examination of future ways of dealing with human rights in the context of
crises such as climate change, economic recession and civil wars. In order to do so,
it will be necessary to design holistic frameworks that capitalise on the connec-
tions of different resources at different levels, between natural and cultural settings
(Fig.
4.7
).
Landscape is therefore proposed here as an umbrella concept, which allows its
multiple tangible elements to unite with its intangible values, and in turn to
generate alternative scenarios for constructing new approaches to land use and
human well-being. By expanding on the concept of human rights in the context of
landscape as a container of both tangible and intangible values, it has been possible
to produce a discourse that includes different contexts.
This new discourse on landscape and human rights served as a platform to
inspire a diversity of ideas and conceptual interpretations highlighted at the RtL
Conference in Cambridge in December 2008. The worldwide case studies dis-
cussed, interdisciplinary in the theoretical situation of their authors, broke fresh
ground for an emerging critical dialogue on the convergence of landscape and
human rights. The results of the RtL Research (Egoz et al.
2011
) have shown
landscape as 'a concept indispensable to the probing of human nature and human
well-being, drawing on and cross-fertilizing such diverse fields as the study of
nature, history, anthropology, psychology, politics, and law' (Tuan
2011
, 310).
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