ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore the key culture/nature architecture of modernity and its ecological crisis in relation to rural space. The associations between nature and rural space in Western political, economic and cultural discourses are powerful and persistent. In a number of states in Europe and around the world, conservation bodies are seeking to counter ecocide through new 'integrated' and 'landscape-scale' approaches. The city is in all wilder landscapes as conservation measures and tourist pressures shape how rural and wilderness landscapes are valued and managed. Indeed the city is the focus of the World Wide Fund (WWF) Living Planet Report 2014, which suggests how cities can be the engine of future sustainability by reducing their impacts. The conversion of wild lands to agricultural production and the spread of modern/industrial farming systems and methods across traditional production spaces mean that ecocide is playing out most powerfully in rural space.
