Tacking Stock: Conclusions and Recommendations

This chapter summarises the main points brought out by the previous contributions to draw key lessons learnt and policy recommendations. These are: (i) the need for multidisciplinary approaches and the mobilisation of a variety of knowledge and expertise, and the consequent need of adequate tools and techniques; (ii) the importance of considering the perceptive component of landscape, in order to capture its distinguishing features with respect to other concepts; (iii) the consequent importance of combining expert opinions and technical tools with methods able to survey people’s preferences and opinion, hence the importance of public and stakeholder engagement; (iv) the recognition of the presence of trade offs between different ecosystem/landscape services as well as between rural development objectives and the consequent implications for policy making; (v) the need of a change of paradigm in current approach to landscape and rural development policy design and implementation from a sectoral to a territorial governance approach.