The European
Landscape Convention of 2000 sets out both specific and general
measures that countries should adopt to achieve landscape
protection, management and planning. Specific measures include
awareness-raising, training and education and the use of landscape
character assessment to measure its social value and monitor the
forces for changes.
General measures
include recognition in law of the idea of landscape, and the need
for landscape policies to be integrated with other aspects of
policy, including spatial planning, and cultural, environmental,
agricultural, social and economic policies.
The Convention also
emphasises that landscape exists everywhere, not just in special
places: it can be urban as well as rural, maritime as well as
terrestrial, 'degraded' as well as well-preserved, everyday as well
as outstanding, typical as well as special. Landscape in all its
diversity contributes to the formation of local cultures and is a
basic component of cultural heritage as well as collective and
personal identity. The strong theme of personal involvement in
landscape, which runs through the Convention, supports the view
that democratic participation is essential in landscape
management.
