The European Landscape as a Task : Understanding the Past, Engaging in the Present, Living the Future?

Summary

Landscape stories based on memories and dreams are essential means to realise how we identify with our landscapes and with what makes up the value of its past. However, the ever more dominating global market orientation of the agricultural sector (and of the many other policy sectors impacting landscape development) makes the European landscape undergo serious and at times radical changes. Landscape change is normal, but it can work out very detrimental if it has not been consciously envisaged. Engaging in today’s landscape and in the functions it can have for society is a precondition for a living landscape. Such engagement will not come from policy. Engaging means getting involved, based on shared interests, using local as well as scientific knowledge and paying respect to the land managers of today and to the unique character of the landscape. If we manage, we can responsibly live the future of the European landscape.