11 minute read
Celebrating 20 years of the European Landscape Convention (ELC)
Gary Charlton
Gary Charlton is Senior Landscape Adviser at Natural England Dave Hooley is a former Senior Archaeological Investigator at Historic England Maggie Roe is Reader in Landscape Planning Research and Policy Engagement & Dean of Postgraduate Studies, McCord Centre for Landscape at Newcastle University) Sarah Tunnicliffe is Senior National Rural and Landscape Adviser at Historic England
Twenty years since its ratification, the ELC has made a huge impact on the work of landscape practice. Its adoption was a critical moment in providing clarity, expression and force to the concept of landscape, and it has provided recognition of the fact that landscapes are of vital relevance to people’s identity everywhere.
The UK has benefitted from having a formal reference point and a clear framework for the definitions, scoping, human rights and civil obligations that relate to landscapes. Above all, it has provided focus to the way in which we discuss as well as manage our landscapes.
The ELC Articles promote the concept and practice of landscape as a powerful integrating role. As highlighted in the European Science Foundation’s (ESF) 2010 Policy Briefing ‘Landscape in a Changing World’, the strength of a landscape approach (1) lies in its plurality. It encompasses perceptions from all whose minds bear on an area and/or from the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. It provides a framework that can give account for those diverse perceptions and their values when seeking and building consensus for more effective forward planning, environmental management and social wellbeing.
Early years
The UK Government signed and ratified the ELC in 2006. The following year it came into effect with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as the lead department and governance resting with a UK ELC Steering Group and England Implementation Group.
Early research to support the implementation of the ELC in England was undertaken by Newcastle University which highlighted that ‘specific guidelines are needed to help both government departments, regional cross sectoral organisations and sectors to identify how they can incorporate the content of the measures and express the intent of the Convention clearly’ Roe, M. H., Jones, C.J., Mell, I.C, 2008.).
Taking heed of this advice, Natural England (NE) in partnership with Defra and English Heritage (now Historic England, HE) focused on the production of an England Framework for Implementation, the commissioning of research, partner workshops, generic and thematic guidance, the development
A good example of early ELC activity was the production, following consultation workshops, of ELC Guidelines which were published on the Landscape Character Network (LCN) and Natural England’s website in 2009. In Europe as well as in the UK, research projects and papers began to emerge. In the UK this was followed by several sector Technical Advice Notes covering Housing (CLG and Homes and Communities Agency), Protected Landscapes, The Planning Inspectorate, Agriculture and Sustainable Economic Development (2010). These all helped to raise the profile of the ELC within NE, with partners and stakeholders and the public.
ELC Guidance
“The purpose of these guidelines is to explain the ELC... and interprets the text and intent of the Convention into seven principles. The aim is to make it more meaningful and relevant to a wide range of organisations and describe the possible actions that individual organisations can take”, (ELC Guidance, Land Use Consultants, 2009)
The Present
Following this early flurry of awareness raising and activity the ELC slipped down the agenda although ‘light touch’ UK reporting to the Council of Europe has continued over the years with numerous examples of landscape activity captured under the ELC Articles. Collaboration and understanding were needed between, for example, those developing and implementing policy, all of whom have different framings of landscape issues and problems. The establishment of a national Landscape Advisory Group (LAG) by Natural England and collaboration with academics, professional institutions, funding bodies, and agencies was an important response to a clear need for better communication and collaboration and a willingness for policy-makers at the highest levels to listen to those working with key potential for influencing landscape policy implementation. Current reporting examples spanning several Articles include:
ELC reporting
ENGLAND
Glover Landscapes Review
The Landscapes Review, commissioned by the UK Government in 2018, was led by the writer Julian Glover supported by a small panel of review members who published their conclusions in September 2019. The Review makes 27 ‘Proposals’ structured around five themes including: Landscapes Alive for Nature and Beauty, Landscapes for Everyone, Living in Landscapes, More Special Places and New Ways of Working.
Glover Landscapes Review
© Jon Sparks
Landscape Character Assessment
Exmoor National Park saw the formal adoption of its comprehensive Landscape Character Assessment update in July 2018 as a supplementary planning document. Further informal guidance is being planned to address the unintended impacts of external lighting in relation to the protection of Exmoor’s dark skies.
Heritage Lottery Fund
Yorkshire Dales National Park launched the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership programme (2019). Led by Friends of the Dales this is a £3.45m, 4-year programme of action to unlock and reveal the hidden heritage of the Westmorland Dales, enabling more people to connect with, enjoy and benefit from this inspirational landscape.
WALES
Environmental colour assessment
Training course (2019) through the RDP/ RCDF programme relating to digital inclusion to raise awareness of the role colour plays in the landscape, assessing materials colour palettes for buildings through the planning process and for the community to discover what colours may represent their community to inform a subsequent web site.
The Statutory Register of Historic Parks and Gardens in Wales
With over 95 per cent of sites completed, the consultation process for the statutory register historic parks and gardens in Wales is nearly over. It is expected that Cadw will conclude the last consultations soon and that the statutory register will come into force soon thereafter.
Landscape and climate change
Natural Resources Wales evidence report ‘Landscape and a changing climate in Designated Landscapes’ identifies and communicates the direct and indirect impacts of projected climate changes for Wales on landscape types and their character and qualities for the three National Parks and five Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in Wales.
Welsh National Park
© istockphoto.com
SCOTLAND
People, Place and Landscape
NatureScot (then called SNH) and Historic Environment Scotland (HES), the lead heritage bodies in Scotland, share statutory roles in the conservation, management and sustainable use of our landscapes, and in promoting their enjoyment and understanding. In October 2019 they jointly published “People, Place and Landscape: A Position Statement”. An accompanying Action Plan followed in January 2020.
Citizen science and landscape monitoring
NatureScot carried out a review of its pilot of using citizen science approaches to supplement fixed-point photography in landscape monitoring. The report was published in summer 2020. It found that engaging the public in this work was not straightforward, despite some innovative work in several countries.
Landscape Character Assessment
Following the launch in spring 2019 of the revised national set of landscape character assessments, work on updating the related information on landscape evolution is underway. Landscape staff in NatureScot and Historic Environment Scotland, and staff in local authorities, have been consulted. NORTHERN IRELAND
Heritage Lottery Fund
In Northern Ireland there are currently 6 Landscape Partnership Schemes that receive funding from the HLF. These are at various stages in the process from inception to completion/ legacy and they cover a wide area of NI from the Mournes and Ring of Gullion in the south east, the Heart of the Glens of Antrim in the north and Lough Erne in the west. They form a vital link between local people and their landscape.
World Heritage Sites
Work continues in relation to the Giants Causeway and Causeway Coast World Heritage Site. DAERA has commissioned a new WHS Management Plan 2020-2027 and the draft plan is nearing completion.
Landscape Change
NI AONBs developing a Fixed-Point Photography Project which captures changes in the landscapes over time. In its 3rd year initial analysis work has started in the form of a questionnaire with the intention of delivering a final report by the end of 2020.
Historic England perspective
The ELC definitions have proved of particular significance in formalising recognition that the historic landscape is fully a dimension permeating the overall landscape: that human thought, attitudes and actions have contributed to its present perceived character through time in conjunction with natural processes everywhere, not as one of many sectors but cross-cutting all, or as a discontinuous array of discrete sites or areas, or as just ‘the old’ however that may be defined.
In recognising the historic landscape’s dimensional presence, the ELC consolidated in landscape a pre-existing understanding that was already widely accepted in the UK from archaeological research by the early 1990s. The development of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) responded directly to that, applied initially in Cornwall in 1993-4 and then extended across England’s counties in a major programme partnered between English Heritage (EH), and England’s local authorities.
To give some examples (2) of the historic landscape work underpinned by the ELC, EH and later HE continued and completed the HLC programme across England’s counties and other sub-regional areas. Work began to consolidate Regional HLCs to support integrated Regional Landscape Character Frameworks but, with government abandonment of regional planning structures in 2010, the focus moved to a national scale for more strategic landscape planning inputs. Work began on a national thesaurus of historic character terms, exploring options to bring county HLCs’ terms to national consistency while retaining equivalent more localised terms whose nuanced meanings remain necessary to reflect local identity in local or regional scale work, respecting the ELC’s emphases on identity and plurality. With the Thesaurus completed and the county HLC’s nearly so, HE supported Natural England (NE) in building a National HLC (NHLC) from the data in the county HLC coverage. The publication by NE of the NHLC as Govt. Open Data in 2019 now makes HLC available to inform its many applications across the whole of England’s land area at both national and sub-regional scales.
In a substantial extension of HLC, Historic Seascape Characterisation (HSC) applied the ELC’s understanding and the HLC approach to characterise historic landscape across coastal and marine areas, so capturing a maritime perspective of the historic dimension of landscape to complement HLC’s land-based perspective, the two overlapping along the coast. Mirroring the NHLC, a National HSC (NHSC) database encompassing all of England’s inshore and offshore regions was completed in 2017 and now forms one of the core data sources informing England’s Marine Plans’ preparation.
Conclusion
So, there is much to celebrate as we mark this twentieth anniversary of the ELC’s adoption. As we do so, it is worth noting that the need to assert the ELC’s approach to landscape and people’s rights and obligations that go with it, remains as strong as ever. As the ESF observed, landscape’s force as an integrative concept makes it well-placed as a framework to serve our needs in addressing many of the serious challenges faced by humanity which similarly span the sciences and humanities: challenges such as climate change; ecological imbalances; habitat/biodiversity degradation and loss, food shortages and developing a holistic approach to people’s health and wellbeing.
In the context of continuing political upheaval, severe financial cutbacks for landscape work, restructuring of relevant organisations and other difficulties, recent approaches and landscape policy seems to be moving to a more proactive and transdisciplinary approach, which again reflects many of the discussions and findings that emerged during the original research carried out by Newcastle University.
These include:
• more emphasis on multiple benefits that landscapes can provide
• a focus on connectivity in landscapes and the ‘ripple’ effect of landscape benefits
• recognition of people’s values and ordinary, ‘in-between’ landscapes
• developing participatory working over large scale landscape areas
• the importance of academic research, assessment and monitoring for policy development.
The ELC is so well-placed because it gives an obligation to account for the many perspectives and interests involved in landscape change: an obligation to involve people, to work with their perceptions and to seek consensus when planning landscape change aimed at resolving such issues. However well-intentioned and wellfounded our proposed solutions may be, those obligations need to be fulfilled if their outcome is to be truly effective and sustainable.
Waygood environmental colour assessment training course exploring the benefits and limitations of the use of colour in base line analysis to manage change
© Andrew Nevill
Further information
CoE (Council of Europe) (2000) The European landscape convention text. https://www.coe. int/fr/web/conventions/full-list/-/ conventions/rms/ 0900001680080621
Land Use Consultants (2010) European Landscape Convention: guidelines for managing landscapes. Available https:// www.gov.uk/government/ publications/european-landscapeconvention-guidelines-formanaging-landscapes
Roe, M. H., Jones, C.J. and Mell, I.C (2008) Research to support the implementation of the European Landscape Convention in England (Contract No. PYT02/10/1.16), Research Report for Natural England. Available through http:// publications.naturalengland.org.uk/
Roe, M. H. (2013) Policy Change and ELC Implementation: Establishment of a baseline for understanding the impact on UK national policy of the European Landscape Convention. Landscape Research 38(6): 768-798 doi:10.10 80/01426397.2012.751968
References
1 It is understood that the ‘landscape approach’ is a ‘driving paradigm in the international environmental and development community’. See Freeman, O. E., L. A. Duguma, and P. A. Minang. 2015. Operationalizing the integrated landscape approach in practice. Ecology and Society 20(1): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ ES-07175-200124
2 See HE website https://historicengland.org.uk/ research/methods/characterisation/historiclandscape-characterisation/
