Biocultural Diversity for Sustainable Ecological, Cultural and Sacred Landscapes: The Biocultural Landscape Approach - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 67

Fig. 4.8 Past ecological landscape research model versus the proposed future biocultural

landscape model

dynamic and evolving, accepting and managing change. It uses a bottom-up
approach, where communities are involved and participate in landscape devel-
opment (Fig. 4.8 ).
The new model provides the framework for a biocultural landscape approach in
landscape research and landscape ecology. Biocultural landscapes are understood
as areas with biotic and cultural elements, connected to each other by historical/
ecological interaction on the territory (Pungetti 2012 a). They form holistic systems
which include diverse elements such as land tenure, land use patterns, production
systems, cultural identity, spiritual dimension and genius loci among others.
Indeed nature and culture are interlinked in the biocultural landscape framework
(Brown et al. 2005 ) which puts people at the core of the process (see Fig. 4.7 ).
Biological and cultural diversity are here coupled: if cultural diversity is vanishing,
biological diversity is threatened and vice versa. Biocultural landscapes, con-
versely, are created by people who have special TEK. They are precisely a trans-
mission of TEK in the everyday life of 'very normal people' with their culture,
education, identity, values, traditions, life-style and land use practices.
Seen as sustainable interactions between people and their environment, cultural
landscapes and sacred sites offer possibilities to elaborate approaches to sustain
biocultural diversity on the appropriate spatial and temporal scales (Schaaf and
Lee 2006 ). Because of their critical ecological, but also cultural, historical and
institutional dimensions, cultural and sacred landscapes can thus be viewed as
sustainability units, well adapted for the exploration of the mutually beneficial