Integrated local landscape management in a globalised world: practices and pathways

Symposium organised by:

Simon Swaffield, School of Landscape Architecture, Lincoln University, New Zealand.
swaffies@lincoln.ac.nz

Jørgen Primdahl, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Copenhagen University, Denmark.
jpr@life.ku.dk

Summary

The symposium will compare current best practice in local landscape management of foodlands across a range of developed countries within and beyond Europe. It will identify and evaluate different potential pathways to improved integration of public policies within local landscapes in which food production is a significant function.

Description

Foodlands - the rural and peri urban landscapes in which food production is a significant function - present both policy and management challenges due to tensions between two competing spatial dynamics. On the one hand the logic and imperatives of growing urban populations, market competition, and global technologies, all expressed through vertically integrated food supply systems, demand ever increasing production efficiency and consistency. On the other hand the territorial logic of local landscapes as settings for living, working, and visiting, and the associated landscape services such as biodiversity, heritage, and recreation, require locally distinctive, more nuanced governance adapted to local configurations of social and natural conditions and capital.

Current landscape management policies and practices tend to emphasise one or other type of logic. The future challenge is to better integrate the different dynamics and functions in sustainable and resilient policy and planning solutions. In Europe, for example, public financial support through the CAP and related mechanisms has served to bridge between the competing dynamics but has done so unevenly, at high costs, and is relatively sectoral in approach. This symposium asks how can market and territorial dynamics be better integrated in affordable and effective ways? What are the best practices worldwide in how to integrate these dynamics? What policy strategies and planning pathways can be followed to implement such practices? What are the research needs?

Impact

The presentations will form the basis for a textbook, intended to be a companion volume to a text published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. More generally the symposium will contribute to further development of policy and planning research within IALE, and extend an existing network of researchers from different disciplines and countries.