Landscape Diversity and The Nature/Culture Divide: Landscape Character Analysis, Designated Areas and the Problem of "Scalar Insularity" in Spatial Planning

Nature preservation traditionally was concerned to protect nature from culture. Today there is increasing awareness of culture’s importance to maintaining natural diversity and vice versa. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) (Europe 2000) now being implemented under the Council of Europe (CoE), thus seeks to combine the protection of culture and nature under the overarching heading of landscape. We have adopted the encompassing term landscape diversity for this unified approach. Sweden is signatory to the ELC and is now preparing a strategy for implementation and ratification (RAÄ 2008). This project will seek to facilitate both the Swedish and the general European implementation process through research into key methods by which countries are seeking to implement the ELC.