Parks & Landscapes in Europe: Towards an Integration of Policies and Management

Because of the risks connected to the global change and the continuous worsening of environmental conditions, biodiversity conservation objectives assume an important role in third millennium strategies. In particular, the current situation challenges the effectiveness of area-based nature conservation policies, such as typically those of Protected Areas (PAs). The “new paradigms” for the conservation of nature proposed by IUCN (Durban 2003; Bangkok 2004; Barcelona 2008) stimulate innovative proposals about nature conservation policies. Landscape, conceived by the European Landscape Convention as a bridge between nature and culture, can support this integration process as it invites not only to broaden the conservation action to the whole territorial context, but also to consider both natural and cultural values, looking at the quality of life and at the identity values. This presentation will focus on the potential relationships between nature conservation policies and landscape policies - a relevant subject also due to the current need of reviving cultural and natural heritage conservation policies, today affected by a general effectiveness deficiency - starting from the outcomes of the research programme “Parks & Landscapes: a territorial research programme”, that CED PPN (the European Documentation Centre on Nature Park Planning, Polytechnic of Turin, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning) launched in the 2008. The outcomes of the research activity have been discussed on the occasion of many international meetings (IUCN WCC 2008, 2012; EUROPARC Conference 2010; EUROPARC WS Reims 2010; Federparchi-San Rossore Group 2011; Roma 3 University 2011; ISCAR et al. 2011). Two Important steps of this work have been the survey on the “New frontiers of conservation” (2010) and the recent initiative of a Research-book “Parks & Landscapes” that will discuss and suggest innovative visions about the relationships between nature policies and landscape policies.