Landscape Charter
About this good practice
The Law 8/2005 for Protection, Management and Planning of the Landscape defines the Charter as an instrument for agreeing on strategies between public and private agents to carry out actions for the protection, management, and planning of the landscape with the aim of maintaining or improving their values.
The Charter has the following functions:
• Detect dynamics of the landscape and discriminate variables and agents associated with these dynamics, to determine risks, opportunities and challenges.
• Achieve a maximum possible support of organized citizenship in favour of their objectives, but also their full involvement in favour of the proposed actions.
• Execute actions within a certain period of time, according to a management program, so that people can enjoy a balanced and quality landscape.
By its nature, the geographical scope of the Charter is limited; that is, a municipality, a commonwealth or, at most, a region preferably with unitary geographical and landscape features.
The preparation of a Charter requires diagnosis, determination of landscape quality objectives and, above all, drafting and signing of the document of an agreement, in which commitments adopted by each of the signatory parties are publicly established in favour of landscape and calendar.
The Landscape Charters are followed up by the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia, which ensures that they are coherent with the landscape catalogue in their ambit of action.
Resources needed
The phase of preparing the Charter and all the participation process in order to sign the Agreement has an average cost between 5.000 and 15.000 euros.
Evidence of success
Already 8 Charters are signed and in action: Vall de Camprodon (2009), Alt Penedès (2004), Berguedà (2007), Alt Empordà (in process), Priorat (2012), Lluçanès (2015 although still open to adhesions), Conca del Barberà (2020) and Garraf (2019).
Potential for learning or transfer
Main process is easily transferable to any European region with characteristic landscapes, easy to define.
Further information
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.