The European Landscape Convention

The European Landscape Convention is an initiative of the Congress of Regional and Local Authorities of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe was founded after the second world war, to enhance the fundamental human rights in Europe. Currently it has 45 member states and has its headquarters in Strasbourg.

The European Landscape Convention (Florence Convention) is a convention aiming at protection, management and planning of all landscapes, and to raise awareness for the values of a living landscape. In fact it stresses the right of the people to identify themselves with ‘their’ landscape, and the right of the landscape to be taken care of. Although the Convention is a weak policy document in terms of legal obligations and power, it represents a real concern with the threatened landscapes of Europe and a substantial appeal to the member states to establish an active landscape policy. Articles 5 and 6 describe the obligations the members states commit themselves to (see website CoE).

The text of the European Landscape Convention was adopted by the Committee of Ministers in July 2002, and the Convention was opened for signature and ratification in Florence (I) in November 2000. The Convention came into force 1 March 2004 after more than 10 member states had ratified the Convention. September 2004, 13 states had ratified: Norway, Moldavia, Rumania, Ukraine, Turkey, Denmark, Ireland, Lithuania, San Marino, Armenia, Slovenia, Kroatia, Macedonia.

LANDSCAPE EUROPE is an acknowledged NGO at the Council of Europe with reference to the process of implementation of the European Landscape Convention. Several staff of LANDSCAPE EUROPE members have participated in this process, among which Bas Pedroli acted as an invited CoE expert in 2003. Dirk Wascher presented the LANDSCAPE EUROPE report on frontier landscapes (Wascher & Perez-Soba, 2004) at the inaugural meeting on the European Landscape Convention in Strasbourg on 17 June 2004.

http://www.coe.int/EuropeanLandscapeConvention

References
Pedroli, B. (Ed., 2000): Landscape – Our Home / Lebensraum Landschaft. Essays on The

       Culture of the European Landscape as a Task. Indigo, Zeist. 221 pp.
Van Mansvelt, J.D. & B. Pedroli (2003): Landscape, identity and integrity. Towards sound

       knowledge, awareness and involvement.. Contribution to the Second Meeting of the

       Workshops for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention. Council of

       Europe, Palais de l’Europe, Strasbourg 27 November 2003.
Pedroli, B. (2004): Die europäische Landschaft, was tun wir mit ihr? Natur + Mensch

       2/2004: 2-5.
Wascher D. & Perez-Soba M. (eds.) (2004): Learning from European Transfrontier

       Landscapes – a project in support of the European Landscape Convention. Alterra