ABSTRACT
The arrival of sustainable development on the environmental scene could not be indifferent to landscapes. The issue of ‘sustainability’ for anglophones and ‘durability’ for francophones disturbed the pseudo-certainties which seemed to have arisen in the complex field of landscape. Starting with the two notions, sustainability and durability are not part of the same question. How can a research programme which has deliberately opted for a European dimension by requesting teams from different European universities solve this issue; does landscape clarify the notion of développement durable or sustainable development? Does landscape operate in the same way in different European countries to implement sustainable development? This has led research teams to compare the types of implementation of sustainable development using a landscape approach in different national and regional contexts. This means analysing different stakeholder practices which modify the biophysical reality of landscapes whilst ensuring the long term reproduction of natural resources and guaranteeing social equity. This involves confronting the transformations of the reality of landscapes in their ways of considering natural resources and the fair distribution of their use, that is their social representations of development and its long-term effects, either to ensure the reproduction of resources, or to ensure the fair distribution of the fruits of their use, or to allow societies to maintain acceptable, sustainable access to their benefits. We must, therefore, critically observe policies (dedicated or not) and in particular, their coherence with landscape quality objectives.
