Scotland
© Carlos Galan Diaz


Austria
© Gunter Prager


Germany
© Karl Martin Born

Terms

Multi-stakeholder partnership: The project focuses on groups that are made up of individuals with differing backgrounds and differing interests (e.g. farmers, landowners, residents, hunters, conservationists, bird watchers). Membership is voluntary. ‘Partnership’ means that members treat each other as partners and collaborate in order to tackle the problems they identified.

Stakeholder: is someone who has ‘a stake’ in issues and outcomes such as how a piece of land is managed, how a species can be protected, or how a community should develop. Stakeholders may represent themselves (their own interests) or organisations (interest groups, elected officials, agencies).

Contributions of multi-stakeholder partnerships:

1. Groups contribute to the management of the landscape and to the social and economic well-being of rural communities by mobilising volunteers, coordinating activities, creating networks between various sectors of the community and supporting the implementation of plans and programmes.
2. Within the group, interests of stakeholders are voiced and negotiated, and transported into policy processes as a coordinated group interest. In return, groups may have an information function as regards policies, and create awareness and understanding of policies among their members.

Geographical scale: Groups at the local and regional (district/ shire/ county) level are of interest. They may comprise many communities of place (towns, villages, catchment area).

Landscape: The concept of cultural landscapes is a holistic one. It does not only include the natural environment (soil, water, biodiversity, etc.) but also the interrelation with built environment and human activities. See also Professor Ken Taylor, on Cultural Landscape:

Cultural Landscape: includes not only culture and ecology, natural resources and biodiversity. It also embraces historic events, activities, which occur in relationship to soil, slope, water and fertility, climate, flora and fauna. The range of human responses to placed conditions define the tangible and intangible values inherent in cultural landscapes.