Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 19
Implications of Landscape History and
Cultural Severance for Restoration in England
IAN D. ROTHERHAM
There is increasing concern about the severance of land and land use from its cultural
past. British responses include landscape-scale attempts to “re-create” extensive con-
servation areas like the Cambridgeshire fenland, with Britain's largest-ever, lottery-
funded conservation project. Such efforts are undertaken because people recognize
landscape-scale projects are needed for plants and animals to respond to climate
change, to meet national obligations to offset carbon emissions, and to mitigate and
moderate flood risk. These major restoration projects are also intended to help eco-
nomic development, especially in postindustrial and depressed rural areas. Such res-
toration projects go far beyond 1970s and 1980s reclamation efforts in Britain and aim
to regenerate sustainable landscapes. The intention is to embed these landscapes in
the regional environmental matrix and to reinvigorate the regional economy and
communities.
Yet there are serious flaws in the approaches embodied in these projects because
they are undertaken with little knowledge of local cultural history. The driving forces
that shaped and manipulated these ecosystems for centuries or millennia are mostly
overlooked, undermining ecological, social, and economic sustainability. This chap-
ter examines recent projects and their shortcomings and suggests how they could be
more successful. It highlights the need to link culture and ecology, history and econ-
omy, in bold landscapes larger and more dynamic than (with a few exceptions) any-
thing previously attempted in British or European conservation. Projects must be eco-
nomically robust and sustainable. Furthermore, in order to effectively deliver the
desired outputs of biodiversity, these need to at least mimic the original landscape
conditions. Most projects do not.
Cultural Landscapes and Conservation
The traditional and “cultural” uses of natural resources and the consequent impacts
on landscapes and their ecology are generally overlooked (Agnoletti 2006, 2007).
Even major landscape-scale effects, like the formation of England's Norfolk Broads
by medieval peat cutting to supply Norwich and other areas with fuel, went
