European landscape convention:Challenges and chances

 The Meeting addressed representatives of Governments - Members of the Steering Committee for Culture, Heritage and Landscape (CDCPP), the Council of Europe Conference on the European Landscape Convention, representatives of other ministries, local and regional authorities, academics, professionals and governmental and non-governmental organizations working in the field of landscape and sustainable management, with its environmental, cultural, social and economic dimensions. It enabled the exchange of information on advances, perspectives and practices as well as the theoretical approaches at European, national, regional and local level. Some 120 participants from different European countries participated.
The four Workshops organized were entitled:
– “The national landscape policy of Armenia”;
– “Strategies and policy documents in favour of the landscape”;
– “Legal and financial instruments”;
– “Horizontal and vertical co-ordination”.
After Maguelonne Dejeant-Pons welcomed the participants, mostly representatives of the signatory countries which are the parties to the European Landscape Convention. This time the workshop is focused on "National policies for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention: Challenges and opportunities. Armen GHULARYAN on behalf of the Armenian Government is opening the Council of Europe 18th workshop for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention in Yerevan.
Ruzan ALAVERDYAN, Armenian representative for the Landscape European Convention since years, welcomes the workshop participants.
Liv Kristine Mortensen, Chair of the European Landscape Convention Conference, stressed in her opening address the importance of landscape policies on national, regional and local level. The regional and local level is a key in the implementation of the European Landscape Convention.
Anne-Marie Chavanon, on behalf of the Council of Europe Assembly of the INGOS, makes an inspiring statement about the importance of democracy and the rule of law in the implementation of the European Landscape Convention. She stressed the need of the involvement of the citizens in the implementation of the European Landscape Convention.
The morning session on 5 October 2016 offered lessons to learn from the implementation of the European Landscape Convention in Armenia. In the discussion also critical questions have been raised about the involvement of a wider public, mentioning also the challenge of a commercialization of landscape. The final discussion of the morning session highlighted the achievements in the implementation process. Local communities are a key according to Mr Ohanyan from Yerevan Municipality.
Especially interesting was the Finlandian delegations presentation on the implementation of the European Landscape Convention. The Cultural Environment Strategy was developed for 2014-2020 which incorporats several internal conventions that Finland has signed. The European Landscape Convention is one of the most prominent.
HERICOAST project has been presented to several national representatives, which all never had heard about the project before. Beside the national representatives of the project partners countries, several other countries like Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Sweden and Finland showed interest to follow the project. Cyprus will held the next presidency of the Council of Europe in 2017.
CIVILSCAPE has prepared a document with the presentations of the national strategies in different countries.

For general conclusions please see the official document: http://rm.coe.int/doc/09000016806f46d0