Wild Land News no 68, Spring 2007

Landscape - Coming More Into Focus? Article

Alistair Cant reports on a significant initiative to put landscape protection on to the political map

In June 2006, Scottish Natural Heritage, with the support of the Scottish Executive, established the Scottish Landscape Forum (SLF) to discuss, prepare advice and promote action to improve the care of Scotland's landscape. The Forum has met several times and is due to make a final report to the Deputy Minister for Environment & Rural Development in Spring 2007.

The Forum, comprising a number of public and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) bodies has come at an opportune time, with the UK ratifying the European Landscape Convention in November 2006 and with the Scottish planning policy guidance NPPG 14 on Natural Heritage currently being revised.

To promote the debate, SNH held a major seminar on 19 January on Landscape at its Battleby centre. Over 70 people including the Wild Land Group's Co-ordinator, Alistair Cant, attended. Much effort by SNH and others had been put into producing briefing and discussion papers on the strands of: Legislative issues; Policy issues; Practice and application; Landscape values and benefits; Awareness and Education.

The European Landscape Convention

The European Landscape Convention defined landscape as "..an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors."

Thus landscape covers not just wild land, not just rural areas/countryside, but also urban areas and involves humans as well as natural forces, and human perceptions as well as factual attributes.

The Convention has no legal status, compared to say the Habitats directive, so there is no European designation system and no European Committee. It is up to individual countries to assess their policies and systems in relation to the Convention. The UK Government has already stated that it deems itself to meet the Convention. Clearly the delegates at the SNH seminar felt more could be done to enhance our landscapes. Scotland both had a wide range of excellent landscapes, and with its Scottish Parliament and Executive, we could take a lead on landscape.

Recipe for making landscape - start with a bit of sea?

The day was excellent for raising the issue and bringing together a wide range of participants, and also raised the key issue of the quality of urban centres and well as the urban fringes - often where most people interact with landscape. Niek Hazendonk, a keynote speaker from the Netherlands, outlined how his Government sees landscape as something to mould, shape and manage - the Netherlands of course being famous for making land, out of the sea.

The SNH seminar recognised that all landscapes are processes with change as the constant. Climate change adds to this dynamic. Being able to manage these processes carefully and proactively is a real skill, barely understood by many.

A duty of care for landscape ?

On the aspect of protecting landscape through legislative means, the workshop on this topic felt that a key target to progress was to push for a refreshed Landscape Duty for public bodies that endorses the Convention's definition of landscape and modernises Scotland's approach. Such a Duty could require local authorities and others to consider landscape when evaluating policies and proposals. Whilst this in itself may not bring many new obligations, such a Duty was seen as a key bedrock upon which to build a comprehensive approach to landscape protection and enhancement.

Some were in favour of a Landscape Act in the future, to define and protect landscapes; however, it was recognised that thinking, definitions and support would need to be developed considerably before any such proposal could be fleshed out.

What about threats to wild land?

All this talk and healthy debate took place at a time when in the real world, wild land is still under tremendous threat from a range of sources. The Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 has seen more protection for National Scenic Areas (NSAs); however, the production of Management Plans for NSAs has not been placed on a statutory basis at present. The onslaught of renewable energy schemes in many fine wild places continues, and the Public Inquiry into the Beauly-Denny power line gears up too.

The Scottish Wild Land Group was pleased to see this greater focus onto Landscape, but we still have a long way to go. Some sectors such as business and enterprise groups do not see landscape protection as a key proposal, despite many rural and tourist businesses benefiting enormously from our landscape. SNH staff and Scottish Executive officers need support from the public and from politicians / political parties to push Landscape up the policy agenda hierarchy. Such support was seen in the Land Reform debate and the Access Forum and assisted considerably in getting well rounded and effective Scottish legislation.

Wild Land in Scotland has many overlapping perceptions - rugged grandeur, unproductive wasteland, repository of past cultural and historical roots, e.g. pre-clearance communities, untapped base for renewable energy, places for inspiration and re-generation of the human spirit, croft-land and community-owned resource, etc, etc.

Scotland needs to develop a stronger more refined approach to its landscape, incorporating all the strands above. We need to be more cautious in some places, bolder in others. We have the opportunity and means through the political and civic systems of policy development and debate. Let us kick-start the process and press for the European Landscape Convention to become a beacon of light in Scotland, for Scotland.