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Collective efforts to manage cultural landscapes

Katrin Prager (Presentation at the workshop “Social-Ecological Resilience of Cultural Landscapes”, Berlin, 15-16 June 2010)

Abstract

People are an important part of cultural landscapes which qualifies these landscapes as social-ecological systems. Our present landscapes are a result of human activity in the past, and such activities continue to impact on landscapes today. The focus of the paper is on efforts to collectively manage cultural landscapes in four European countries. I use collaborative groups as examples of the social units that are part of the social-ecological system. Such collaborative groups have formed to actively manage landscapes in order to preserve their natural and cultural value, but also to derive an income from them. This paper identifies groups in Germany, the UK, Austria and the Netherlands using desk-based review of documents, literature, newspapers articles and websites. I selected Landcare groups (Landschaftspflegeverbände) in Germany, Farming and Wildlife Advisory Groups (FWAG) in the UK, the ‘thistle group’ (Distelverein) in Austria, and environmental cooperatives in the Netherlands. The selected groups share similar goals in that they work to balance economic development with environmental and social goals. In other words, they strive for sustainable management of rural landscapes. This paper explores and compares the characteristics of these groups on an aggregated level and compares variables such as their origin, year of formation, membership base and size, focus of activities, institutional level and organisational structure. Although all types of groups have a history reaching back more than ten years which indicates that they have been resilient to changes over time, groups in Austria and Scotland (UK) have dissolved in 2009. The loss of social units that have previously managed a landscape may weaken the resilience of the whole social-ecological system.

 

 

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Updated: 19 Jun 2020, Content by: KP