Education and the European Landscape Convention:

approaches and example from the italian experience

concerning rural landscape
Mauro Agnoletti

Laboratory for Landscape and Cultural Heritage
University of Florence - Dep. for the Management of Agriculture,
Food and Forest Systems

www.landscape.unifi.it
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ITALIAN POLICIES AND ELC

Ministry of Agriculture :
- CAP 2007-13 landscape in national rural development plan
Ministry of Culture (ELC in the Code for Cultural Heritage in 2004)
- (Landscape restrictions- 20% of territory )
Nature Conservation - Ministry of Environment no ELC
- Parks and Protected areas (20% of territory)
- Climate change , pollution
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Agricultural Policies
- Protection of landscape elements in cross compliance
- Law for landscaper restoration
- National Register of Historical Landscape
- National observatory of rural landscape
2012 Ministry of Agriculture in charge of policies for rural landscape
- 2012 ELC incorporated in the national observatory for rural landscape
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National observatory for rural landscape
1 - strategies for safeguarding, valorize, planning and manage landscape
2 - inventory of landscapes , agricultural practices and traditional knowledge
3 - manage the national register of historical landscapes and traditional practices
4 - monitor the effects of policies and landscape changes
5 - definition of landscape quality objectives
6 - exchange of information among regions and administrations
7 - promote education and planning
8 - promote integration between spatial planning and rural development
9 - promotes research and preservation of biocultural diversity of the rural territory
10 - promotes information and knowledge the rural landscape
11 - elaborates general principles and guidelines for landscape management

activities
Policy : the vision
The Italian rural landscape has been shaped by culture (farming and forestry )


the rural landscape is the form that man, in the course and for the ends of his

agricultural activity, consciously and systematically imposes to natural

landscape Emilio Sereni 1961

(the Florence declaration of UNESCO-CBD JP states that European landscape
is predominantly a biocultural multifunctional landscape)
- landscape as a perspective for the development of the rural territory

(added value for the economy, for environmental quality, for quality of life)
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Main trends in rural landscape

- Industrialization of agriculture

- Abandonment and renaturalization
( half of the farmed land abandoned forest have doubled,
1920-2007 - from 10% to 30% of Italy + 75.000 ha /year;
enormous increase of wild fauna)

- Urbanization (1996-2012 +8000 ha/y)
Emergency: landscape of high historical values are disappearing
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University: history, geography and fine arts
- Landscape from an aesthetic point of view
- Landscape included in cultural heritage studies or archaeology but related to
monuments
- Landscape in art and in general history, little connection with
agricultural and forest activities.
- Excellent skills of historical geographers in GIS
The University - agriculture
- Teachers comes or from production or from forestry
- Historically the agriculture sector has been against landscape or not interested
- landscape is usually included in nature and/or biodiversity
conservation courses (as in faculties of biology)

- Due the growing interest for landscape there is a tendency to put under the cap
of landscape courses teachings in traditional subjects: e.g. geology, botany,
viticulture, silviculture, etc
The University - architecture
- Main schools are those on parks and garden and territorial planning
- Planning has developed an interest on rural landscape in the last 10 years
- There are interdisciplinary courses on planning including
teachers from the faculty of agriculture, botanists, geologists, historians..
- However teachers continue to teach their topic as in their faculty of origin
The University - architecture
- Knowledge borrowed from basic environmental science (ecology, biology etc.)
are largely applied. Little skills to recognize the cultural features of green
areas and biodiversity at landscape scale.
- The architecture of crops and training techniques are not thaught
- little attention is devoted to inform the students of man /nature relationships in
the dynamic of the landscape, considering rural practices.
The University - architecture
- Diacronic studies are now a standard approach to understand changes in
the landscape mosaics, normally using aerial photos.
- The idea that once planning has been done the rural landscape is
saved no connection with rural economy.
- In the planning courses great emphasis is placed on the productions of maps.
Good GIS experts. How do we produce maps?
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Conclusions
- Very different approaches offers a rich and diverse spectrum of teachings
- Planning approaches produce experts suited for planning
purposes (public administrations)
- Production approach produce experts suited for traditional
agricultural activities
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Conclusions
- Ecological approach produce experts mostly suited for nature
conservation
- Lack of skilled experts to put together rural development, planning
and the cultural features of the rural territory (food , biodiversity, history)
- Political initiatives in rural landscape proceed at higher speed then
- university teaching . Education is not yet producing the type of experts needed