Session: #638

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

Land use issues such as agricultural production, farm restructuring and forestry continue to be the biggest causes of degradation and loss to Europe's rural heritage. Although these impacts have been recognised and in some cases mitigated by programmes such as the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, cultural heritage generally has not figured prominently within EU policy, nor has its conservation been accorded the same priority as that of the natural environment. Policy relies upon evidence - and recent work to influence politicians, policymakers and others (such as the EU Reflection Group EU and Cultural Heritage's non-paper "Farming the Historic Landscape") has attempted to use information on impacts, threats and values to move the discussion on once more. Making the case for rural heritage is reliant upon demonstrating not only the challenges it faces - but also identifying the scale of these problems and the socio-economic value that conserving it might bring. The session will have contributions from across Europe. It will look at what types of evidence has already been collected, how has it been used - and identify both the gaps and what more can we do to make future progress in this area.

conservation, socio-economic, policy, evidence, rural

no

yes

no

Mr Vincent Holyoak (United Kingdom) ¹

Mr Karl Cordemans (Belgium) ^2,3