Even popularly thought, landscapes are much more than visual sceneries. Instead, they are environments for dialog between nature and culture. The 2004 European Landscape Convention (ELC) is the first international treaty to be exclusively concerned with the protection, management and planning of all dimensions of landscape, and not restricted to exceptional landscapes but also considering everyday landscapes. The Landscape Approach (LA) is a bottom-up, collaborative and community-based approach to landscape planning and management, with the aim of balancing competing demands in a way that is best for human well-being and the environment. It means creating solutions that consider food and livelihoods, finance, rights, restoration and progress towards climate and development goals. LA opens opportunities to discuss and negotiate from the more concrete shared reality, with the outline of values, expectations and acceptable trade-offs for each type of user and stakeholder, in order to envision future landscapes upon the principle of non-regressive policies of the ELC. Living and thriving landscapes are increasingly related to wellbeing and quality of life, and the public administration cannot manage them with traditional sectoral thinking. Hence, many private corporations, NGOs, landowners and citizens, are developing or getting involved in experiences to regenerate or manage landscapes in environmentally friendly ways. It is a novel trend by which communities and stakeholders are gaining ownership over the spaces that conform the green and blue infrastructures of ordinary surroundings, but also a solution for endangered or highly valuable and very sensitive natural areas at international scale. Even if the ELC has affected the national landscape legislation, the basic ideas of the LA are seldom implemented in landscape practices. As a consequence, landscape remains prone to social conflicts, as landscapes’ multifaceted nature and multistakeholder legitimacy are insufficiently considered. The partners of the consortium are willing to tackle the question, how actors and stakeholders can collaborate into the governance of a landscape. Thus, the main aim of the project is to enhance landscape awareness and collaborative governance of cultural and natural landscapes through innovative learning interventions in higher education. The specific objectives of the project are: - To promote integrated landscape approach in land use and environmental management. - To enhance civic engagement to bring-on pro-environmental behavior towards every day landscapes and threatened landscapes. - To innovate in citizen science and participatory methods as tools for landscape planning and management. - To design innovative learning environments and interventions for landscape education in order to ensure collaboration and knowledge creation. The project activities will culminate in Learning Labs organized in the partner countries. In the Labs, HE students will be offered a close-up experience about community-based landscape planning, management, and conservation initiatives with stakeholders, like local authorities, environmentalist NGOs as well as local citizens. While working on concrete situations of action students are guided to collaborative knowledge creation together with stakeholders and generating new knowledge, skills and innovations. In addition to the main target group of HE students and teachers, the project recognizes other target groups, like policy-makers, local and regional authorities, environmental planners and managers, environmental NGOs and citizens. Expected results of the project have been foreseen into societal, scientific and educational results: Societal results: - Exploitation of integrated LA through interactive applications and participatory methods ease off the deployment of collaborative landscape governance - Awareness of landscape values increases and citizens are more engaged to act for their local landscapes - New knowledge and improved flow of communication between policy-makers, authorities and citizens - Citizen science application is an open-access tool for every interested user Scientific results: - Contribution to the theoretical discussion of the holistic nature of landscape - The rise of the methodological awareness when studying landscape - Elaboration of the connection between the LA and the citizen science - Emphasis towards the idea of open science Educational results: - New transferable HE landscape education methodologies, applications and materials - Enhanced skills and competences of the students and teachers involved in the project activities - New pedagogical innovations based to the socio-constructivist learning theory - Increased ability of involved students to comprehend and act on the multifaceted processes of landscape governance - Innovative learning environments and interventions play significant role in landscape education
The specific objectives of the project were: 1) To promote integrated landscape approach in land use and environmental management. 2) To enhance civic engagement to bring-on pro-environmental behavior towards every day landscapes and threatened landscapes. 3) To innovate citizen science and participatory methods as tools for landscape planning and management. 4) To design innovative learning environments and interventions for landscape education in order to ensure collaboration and knowledge creation. The project developed and enhanced partnership between HE institutions, organizations in the field of landscape planning and management, environmental NGOs and citizens. The project activities took place in four countries in Europe (Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Finland), and the project was carried out in close cooperation between the partners and stakeholders, like policymakers, local and regional authorities, environmental planners and managers, environmental NGOs and citizens. HE students and teachers were the most important target group of the project. Through learning labs organized by the project, students gained new international and interdisciplinary learning experiences, which are supporting them to more collaborative, community-based, and critical thinking and acting, and they earned both subject related, transversal, and labor market competences for the future in the fields of both working and private life.
The European Landscape Convention (ELC) promotes the protection, management and planning of European landscapes and organizes European co-operation on landscape issues. The first aim of the ELC is to encourage states to introduce a national landscape policy that is not restricted to the protection of exceptional landscapes but also considers everyday landscapes. The Landscape Approach (LA) is about balancing competing land use demands in a way that is best for human well-being and the environment. It means creating solutions that consider food and livelihoods, finance, rights, restoration and progress towards climate and development goals. LA offers a bottom-up, collaborative, and community-based approach to land use planning and management. Even if the ELC has affected the national landscape legislation, the basic ideas of the LA have not totally fulfilled in landscape practices. The project wanted to tackle the question, how actors and stakeholders can collaborate into the governance of a landscape. Thus, the main aim of the project was to enhance landscape awareness and collaborative governance of cultural and natural landscapes through innovative learning interventions in higher education. In the ethos of European Commission’s agenda, the project focused e.g. on improving the relevance of HE education, linking higher education to regional environmental planning, and strengthening competences and motivation of HE teachers.