What is a cultural landscape?

Cultural landscape is a term used to describe the interaction between human activity and the environment and falls into three main categories according to the World Heritage Committee: 

  1. "a landscape designed and created intentionally by man" 

  1. an "organically evolved landscape" which may be a "relict (or fossil) landscape" or a "continuing landscape" 

  1. an "associative cultural landscape" which may be valued because of the "religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element." 

Cultural landscapes exist everywhere in the Nordics. In highlands, stony and mountainous areas you can find mainly low-productive grassland areas, with animal husbandry farming.  In the lowlands you tend to find more intensively managed agricultural fields, with crops such as wheat, oil seed rape and sugar beets.  

Cultural landscapes as NbS

The main purpose of cultural landscapes is to provide food; hence they are essential for the societal challenge food security. However, nature-based solutions within the cultural landscape can provide co-benefits counteracting other societal challenges as well, such as biodiversity degradation and loss, eutrophication, greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion and degradation. 

NbS that can be implemented in cultural landscapes:

  • Flower strips and buffer zones: Buffer zones and flower strips are types of vegetation structure planted to serve a specific purpose. For example, to protect a water course by taking up excess phosphorous from field run-off, provide flower resources for insects, provide food and shelter to animals, or protect against soil erosion. 

  • Maintaining grasslands and meadows: Maintaining and creating grasslands and meadows is an important conservation measure for semi-natural and natural ecosystems in the cultural landscape. 

  • Crop rotation: Crop rotation is the change of crops between harvests. This can be from one year to another or, depending on climate and crop type, several times over a season.  

  • No tillage: No, or reduced, tillage refers to the practice of sowing or planting the new crop, after harvest, without first tilling the soil. 

  • Maintaining and creating key elements:  

  • Perennial crops: Perennial crops are crops that are not tilled after harvest but planted and then harvested year after year without replanting the crop. Most used examples are fruit trees and berry bushes. Perennial cereal crops have not yet been fully developed. 

  • Mulching: Mulching is a collection of NbS that focuses on covering the soil and adding nutrients and organic matter to it. This can be compost, chopped plant material, or even living mulch in form of intercropping plants that grow under the main crop.   

Are you unsure how to choose an NbS for the cultural landscapes? See our general guidance on Nature-based solutions! Link to general guidance 

References

UNESCO (2012) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention [1] Archived 2019-11-27 at the Wayback Machine. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Paris. Page 14. 

 

This page has been written by Helena Hanson and Johanna Alkan Olsson