Session: #612

Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Current European rural landscapes are the result of coevolutive processes between human beings and nature. Understanding landscapes means disentangling those complex historical relationships, including not only perceptions and identities, but also production, local ecological knowledge (LEK) and associated traditional practices. Different societies have created different landscapes through time. Social options and strategies have been essential despite environmental conditions. The role of local, peasant communities and power players, in making decisions or developing strategies, has also been different across different European contexts. Currently, Cultural Landscapes (CL) are facing new challenges within the Global Change framework. Relationships between local communities and external players (not always visible) have frequently changed the way local communities live, act in and perceive landscapes. This session aims to debate about CL historical formation as complex socioecosystems; why and how LEK is disappearing at the same time as ancestral practices, resulting in cultural and environmental values of CL being lost. New cultural urban models are being imposed, denying other rural cultural values that have been fundamental for the construction of European landscapes and identities. Almost no debate has taken place about the consequences of those changes, such as the loss of tangible and intangible values, transformations on environmental values, ecosystem services and balances created throughout centuries of cultural interaction. Almost nobody questions how rural communities perceive those changes or which elements communities would like to preserve in this global context. The session will try to respond to these questions by learning from the past to face current challenges

Landscapes, Transdisciplinar, Participation, Global Change

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Jose Maria Martin Civantos (Spain) ¹

Prof Alexandra Chavarria Arnau (Italy) ²