ABSTRACT
The European Landscape Convention (ELC) describes some landscapes as needing ‘management’ although it stresses that this is not an exclusive category, and all places need elements of enhancement and other elements of protection. But the landscape where management is the priority relates to ‘ordinary’ landscapes, those which fulfil a clear function other than ‘being protected’. It therefore includes the bulk of our farmland, of our forest lands and indeed of our residential areas and most of our seas. These are the areas which the Convention was particularly concerned with; there was a perception that the protected landscapes were in good hands and heart, and even that there were clear efforts under way to improve those landscapes which most people found very poor, notably in former industrial areas. The managed lands were continually improving their productivity, whether that meant grain, fish, timber or, in residential areas, of homes; but the overall quality of these landscapes was declining, and becoming less interesting, less differentiated. Globalisation was creating uniformity in this category. Farmland, whether arable or grass, had fewer and fewer flowers (or weeds) and the efficiency of harvesting meant fewer insects and birds; seas were becoming empty, and the sea floor was raked over by trawl nets so regularly as to be in parts lifeless and uninteresting; single-species forest was efficiently producing timber but was less attractive both to wildlife and to humans; even in residential areas there was a constant need to shoe-horn new homes and extensions into any ‘spare’ bits of land such as gardens or small parks, again reducing wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities and general interest.
