Project description
The Landscape Approach project, coordinated by MedINA and WWF North Africa, was developed within the framework of the MAVA Foundation’s Mediterranean strategy for promoting sustainable land-use practices. The approach was implemented in four of its pilot sites – Lemnos Island in Greece, the High Atlas in Morocco, Shouf Mountain and West Beqaa Valley in Lebanon and the Companhia das Lezírias Montado in Portugal.
The Landscape Approach aimed to provide a spatial framework to enhance the capacity of partners to recognise, document and map the links between land-use practices, biodiversity and resulting landscape patterns while working towards a re-definition of the concept of Mediterranean cultural landscapes. Initially, a team of landscape experts from Greece, Jordan and Germany collaborated to produce the common components and principles of the Landscape Approach and proposed the most suitable type of assessment tools to be used in each pilot site. Following that, the partners in the pilot sites applied their selected assessment tools utilising existing data and data collected specifically for the Landscape Approach to apply to their area.
With a view to facilitating management planning, the outcome of this process was the identification of landscape areas and the assessment of landscape status, resulting in the identification of critical areas of concern within the sites such as areas where agricultural terraces are being abandoned. Finally, a synthesis report about the implementation of the Landscape Approach in all pilot sites will soon be published.