This paper proposes a review of the environmental memory concept to articulate the notions of body and environment inherited from modernity, with perspectives coming from the anthropocenic turn. The ...article proposes a bibliographic review of the postulates and subjects that inform about the mnemonic practices having the environment as their object. The research aims to conceptually discuss the meanings of environmental memory, we propose four ways to understand the phenomenon: memories of national nature, cultural landscapes, ecological memories, and memories of the Anthropocene. The first three are built on the prevalence of the distinction between subject and nature, while the latter reflects the colonial epistemologies that have managed to separate society from environment. With this in mind, we defend that environmental memory should be enclosed in the ontological speculation efforts that characterize Anthropocene research, as part of the environmental humanities.
El artículo propone una revisión sobre la idea de memoria ambiental, de modo que articule las nociones de cuerpo y ambiente, heredadas de la modernidad, con las perspectivas advenidas desde el giro antropocénico. Metodológicamente, ofrece una examinación bibliográfica de los postulados y temas que informaron las prácticas mnemónicas que tuvieran el ambiental como objeto. La investigación tiene por finalidad discutir la memoria ambiental más conceptualmente centrada en lo que proponemos como cuatro modalidades de comprensión del fenómeno: memorias de la naturaleza nacional, paisaje cultural, memorias ecológicas y memorias del Antropoceno. Las tres primeras se asientan en la permanencia de la distinción hombre y naturaleza, mientras la última refleja las epistemologías coloniales que han logrado separar la sociedad del ambiente. Con eso, defendemos que la memoria ambiental debe ser parte de los esfuerzos de especulación ontológica que caracteriza la investigación del Antropoceno, bajo las humanidades ambientales.
By taking a small-scale perspective, Bedouin pastoral space in the Israeli Negev in the modern period has been misinterpreted as chaotic by various Israeli institutions. In critiquing this ontology ...we suggest that a knowledge gap with regard to an appropriate scale of understanding
Bedouin settlement patterns and mechanisms of sedentarisation is at its root, and that a larger-scale analysis indicates that their space is in fact highly ordered. Field surveys and interviews with the local Bedouin showed that household cultivation plots in the Negev Highland during the
period of the British Mandate were organised at a large scale through natural and man-made landscape features reflecting their structure, development and deployment in a highly ordered space. This analysis carries significant implications for understanding pastoral spaces at the local scale,
particularly offering better comprehension of various sedentary forms and suggesting new approaches to sustainable planning and development for the Bedouin.
Mediterranean cultural landscapes have been recognized as multifunctional landscapes that are currently threatened by two opposing trends: rural abandonment and agricultural intensification. ...Uncovering people’s perceptions of different landscape configurations, and how inhabitants value the contributions of nature to human wellbeing, is essential to understanding current landscape trends. In this study, we analyze the social perception of the cultural landscapes of Sierra Morena (Andalusia, Spain) based on 389 face-to-face visual questionnaires in an attempt to understand individuals’ landscape preferences, the reasons behind those preferences and how those landscapes are perceived as suppliers of ecosystem services by different groups of stakeholders. Four groups of stakeholders were identified that differed in how they perceive and value the cultural landscape. An urban-related group was characterized by their preferences for pine plantations and “green” landscapes, guided mostly by aesthetic criteria. A livestock-related group showed a clear preference for wood–pasture landscapes (dehesas) due to their ability to supply multiple ecosystem services. An environmentally aware group showed preferences for dehesas and Mediterranean forests, mainly guided by ecological criteria. Finally, an olive-related group showed a clear preference for olive grove landscapes as key for the regional economy and their cultural identity. Overall, the local inhabitants of Sierra Morena perceived a higher supply of ecosystem services in moderately disturbed landscapes, such as dehesas and mosaic landscapes, than in highly disturbed ones, such as conventional olive groves and pine plantations, or in less used landscapes, such as the Mediterranean forest. Understanding the differences in valuation/demand for ecosystem services among groups of stakeholders, characterized by their landscape preferences, provides important information with which to identify potential trade-offs and conflicts, thereby providing insights into the improvement of landscape planning and decision making.
Northwestern Morocco is characterized by highly anthropized landscapes under the combined effect of agricultural intensification, resource overexploitation, urbanization, and tourism, but also local ...reforestation. Reconstructing the recent changes in vegetation in the region of the lower valley of the Loukkos river near Larache and their relationship to the settlement history are particularly helpful for understanding the processes at work within the landscape construction. The geohistorical approach combines paleoenvironmental, documentary, and historical data. The last few centuries have seen the emergence of wooded stands, in which cork oaks are a structural element. As forests were retreating, parklands intended for agriculture, agroforestry, and herding, like the Spanish dehesa and Portuguese montado, began to emerge. Nearly all of them have disappeared today, but we can identify their legacy and evaluate their cultural significance through comparing them with their counterparts in the Iberian Peninsula, but also in other areas of Morocco. Their deep historical roots give this landscape an evolving heritage character that is directly linked to the communities’ lifestyles, culture, and history.
The coastline of Western Pomerania has natural and cultural assets that have promoted the development of tourism, but also require additional measures to ensure the traditional features and ...characteristics are protected. This is to ensure that new developments conform to a more uniform set of spatial structures which are in line with the original culture. Today, seaside resorts are characterized by a rapid increase in development with a clear trend towards non-physiognomic architectural forms which continually expand and encroach on land closer to the coastline. This results in a blurring of the original concepts that characterized the founding seaside resort. This study evaluates 11 development projects (including a range of hotels, luxury residential buildings and hotel suites) built in 2009–2020 in the coastal area of Western Pomerania. An assessment of architecture-and-landscape integration for each development project was made, using four groups of evaluation criteria: aesthetic, socio-cultural, functional and locational factors. The study methodology included a historical and interpretative study (iconology, iconography, historiography) and an examination of architecture-and-landscape integration using a pre-prepared evaluation form. Each criterion was first assessed using both field surveys and desk research (including the analysis of construction plans and developer materials), and then compared with the original, traditional qualities of the town. This study demonstrates that it is possible to clearly identify the potential negative impact of tourism development on the cultural landscape of seaside resorts, and provides recommendations for future shaping, management and conservation of the landscape.
Terraced landscapes were for centuries forms of sustainable and multifunctional land management, results of a long and intimate relationship between peoples and their environment. They demonstrated a ...rich cultural diversity and agrobiodiversity through sustainable land-use systems. These productive cultural landscapes in many cases were expressions of a pre-industrial circular model of rural development, where no resource was wasted. However, not all terraced landscapes have to be considered sustainable in themselves: in recent times, the terraces have undergone changes that have threatened their sustainability with abandonment and degradation as well as exclusively productive exploitation. This paper explores whether and how terraced landscape can recover an active role in modern society, analyzing emerging terraces recovery practices from the perspective of the circular economy. Innovative circular and productive uses of abandoned terraced landscapes aim at reducing the waste of natural and cultural resources, enlarging the lifetime (use value) of landscapes and preserving cultural and natural values for present and future generations. Results show that new functional uses of terraced landscapes are able to enhance in different ways their role as “middle landscapes” or places of mediation among economic, ecologic, ethical and aesthetic needs through circular adaptive reuse practices, becoming key drivers of new “circular” economies and a new pact between rural and urban regions.
What the Ground Says Occhiuto, Rita
Sustainability,
12/2021, Volume:
13, Issue:
23
Journal Article, Web Resource
Peer reviewed
Open access
Ground, as a body incised by natural and human actions (European Landscape Convention), carries “stories”, going beyond quantitative values. As in a text, it holds the keys to understand what it ...covers or hides. In its thickness, it shelters “implicit projects”. Understanding its complexity requires a physical and perceptual commitment, challenging the body in space: dimensions gradually forgotten by Environmental Sciences. As a “threshold” between visible and invisible, Underground-Built-Heritage represents the reverse of the emerged world: hollow space, both generator and mirror of open space (cities, landscapes). The focus is on physical and mental relationships between these two worlds. Past and present relationships emerge, allowing hypotheses to reconstitute collective memories, practices, knowledge, and values, which serve territorial development. The “Three Countries Park” is a place for cross-border experimentation to test how UBH can rebuild common links for fragmented environments. The cavities of a geo-park (planned) and the tangles of underground mining architecture are the fragments of a vocabulary whose meaning communities have to relearn. Built undergrounds will, thus, emerge from common stories that revive the imagination of populations who have lost all notion of belonging to a place. UBH will become a vector of new territorial coherence linking the physical and mental perceptions of people.
From the valorization of the isolated monument to the consideration of the intangible heritage, different constructions of meaning have conditioned the conception of cultural heritage, culminating ...today in the category of Cultural Landscape. Conceived as a new way of thinking and preserving cultural heritage that comprehends the materiality and immateriality of heritage assets as well as its natural and cultural sphere, the notion of landscape already integrates former discussions on heritage, under different values, in conventions and heritage documents. In the same way, since the institution of IPHAN (National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute) the notion of landscape has moved between the categories of cultural heritage and natural heritage, and has been consolidated recently as a specific type of heritage asset, the seal of Brazilian Cultural Landscape, that proposes, as a consequence, a new understanding about Brazilian heritage. In this sense, the objective of this article consists in analyzing the process of heritage activation that would consolidate the notion of Cultural Landscape as a new category of heritage asset in Brazil, and the elements comprehended under this typology.
World cultural landscape heritage (WCLH), recognized as a combination of cultural relics and natural landscapes with outstanding significance and universal value, is unique in terms of its ...differentiation from the deliberate human creativity of general cultural heritage and the “deartificialization” of natural heritage. To date, the management of WCLH has become increasingly standardized. However, with the prevalence of heritage resource development activities such as heritage tourism, the phenomenon of “urbanization”, “commercialization”, “artificialization” and other issues have gradually emerged in WCLH sites. Thus, the management issues of WCLH have become increasingly serious, leading to intense concerns about the unsustainable development of WCLH. Drawing inspirations from management effectiveness (ME) evaluation research of protected areas and acknowledging the uniqueness of WCLH, this study constructs a WCLH ME evaluation system consisting of four general criteria (management foundation, management system, management measures and management performance), 16 factors and 34 indicators. The evaluation system is applied and verified through an empirical study of five existing WCLH sites in China. The empirical results show that the ME of Chinese WCLH is at a “good” level. Specifically, the management of Chinese WCLH is overall impressive in indicators of management planning, heritage protection performance and economic performance but shows deficiency in indicators of protection fees, management infrastructure, management assessment, management institution, social performance, etc. Finally, this study discusses the management issues of respective heritage sites to provide suggestions and inspirations for the development, protection and management of the sites and other cultural landscapes in China and even the world.
Faced with the disappearance and ongoing abandonment of traditional agricultural landscapes (TAL) in Europe, our primary aim is to provide scientific evidence of the importance of TAL in terms of ...biodiversity, cultural and social values, and to stimulate action for their preservation in the Slovakian context. Surveys at both the national and local levels have acknowledged that TAL are generally associated with a relatively high species richness of plants and animals, including the presence of rare and threatened species. They have a high cultural-historical value due to the preserved small-scale structure and the presence of typical agrarian landforms and small architectural elements. A questionnaire survey showed that a major constraint for local inhabitants in maintaining TAL arises from insufficient governmental support. We argue that governmental financial instruments should recognise the concept of TAL in the context of measures concerning High Nature Value farmland.
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