BIOCULTURAL LANDSCAPE ROUNDTABLE

Authors and Affiliations: 

Gloria Pungetti, Oliver Rackham, Jala Makhzoumi

Cambridge Centre for Landscape and People, University of Cambridge, UK

Abstract: 

This Roundtable aims to outline the key points emerged in the presentations at the Symposium on Biocultural Landscape, and to open a discussion between speakers and the audience about this emerging topic. The request for this Roundtable discussion came form other Symposia organisers and other landscape ecologists who do not intend to give a talk in this Symposium, but are willing to debate on the subject and related topics. These will be: cultural landscapes, ecosystem and landscape services, socio-ecological systems, cultural and social indicators, human wellbeing and socio-ecological production, community-based conservation and planning, resilient ecological networks and human factors, biocultural landscape research, and heritage tools for landscape design and planning.

The Roundtable is open to all Congress participants, especially to the Symposium audience, experts and researchers on the topic. The Roundtable participants will discuss the link between cultural and ecological diversity and the contribution that biocultural landscape can offer to conservation biology. They will moreover explore integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to multiple functions and values of biocultural landscapes. Furthermore, they will debate how to improve the understanding of cultural and spiritual values of landscapes and ecosystems, and how to promote the integration of these values into policy, planning and management.

Expert participants who did not give a talk in the Symposium can communicate in a speed-format their advances on biocultural diversity, sacred landscape, traditional knowledge and community involvement in the framework of landscape ecology especially in Europe. The interested participants, finally, can join the IALE European Working Group on Biocultural Landscape, that will be set up at this Symposium, and will report results to the IALE World Congress in 2015.