Integrated planning for landscape protection and biodiversity conservation

Abstract

The definition of landscape adopted in the European Landscape Convention implies the pursuing of awareness raising and public involvement as a primary instrument for planning and policy implementation. As in the Italian tradition, national institutions prove slow in applying such principles and coordinating them with traditional urban planning. The main problem consists in understanding the positive role of landscape, as a dynamic synthesis of cultural and ecological features. In many cases, policy-makers and professional actors still consider the theme of landscape conservation and biodiversity protection as limitative entities. Acts and policies related to Protected Areas worldwide can represent a precious background of experiences for the implementation of an operative procedure of territorial management, which will consider landscape and biodiversity as relevant as economic features. Other effective suggestions come from the outcome document of Rio +20, the latest international convention on sustainable development. Integrating landscape and biodiversity in current national laws may prove inadequate. A successful application of the most recent tools of planning based on holistic approaches and including public-participated processes will be achieved only through a radical reflection about traditional policy-making, which is still linked to the division of the matter in obsolete compartments.