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Landscape and the local perspective

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Landscape charters are voluntary instruments setting out agreements between the agents in an area in order to promote actions and strategies regarding landscape assessment and improvement. The charters can be promoted by the Government of Catalonia, by local authorities (district councils, communities, municipalities) and/or by entities and are followed up by the Landscape Observatory, which ensures that they are coherent with the landscape catalogue in their ambit of action.

• Contents
• Uses
• State of development

Contents of the Landscape Charters

The Decree 343/2006, of 19th September, through which the Act 8/2005, of 8th June, for the protection, management and planning of the landscape is implemented. This Decree regulates studies and reports on landscape impact and integration and establishes what the contents of the landscape charters must be:

• A diagnosis of landscape dynamics.
• The definition of landscape quality objectives to be achieved in the territorial ambit covered by the landscape charter. These objectives must be coherent with the quality objectives established for each of the landscape units defined in the corresponding landscape catalogues.
• Creation of a management programme which sets out the specific actions to be undertaken by the various agents, in which public participation must be guaranteed.

As established in this Decree, the content of the landscape charters must take into account the content of the landscape catalogues which have an impact on their ambits. The content of the landscape charters which have to be formalised without landscape catalogues must take into account the process of making the landscape catalogues.

The landscape charters must also take into account the catalogues on the cultural, artistic and natural heritage of a municipal ambit in the cases where they are approved.

The General Directorate of Architecture and Landscape of the old Ministry of Town and Country Planning and Public Works of the Government of Catalonia established a protocol [note] for making the landscape charters which provides guidelines for the making of this type of agreement.

Uses

The landscape charter is not a simple declaration of principles, but a public document which declares a commitment to the landscape, in which the signatories make a commitment to society to form part of a group project and to work accordingly to achieve the agreed pledges.

The uses of the landscape charters are:

• To prepare a common framework of reference which leads to understanding and consensus between the agents involved in the transformation and management of the landscape of a specific territory, often with views and interests which do not coincide.
• To serve as a point of reference in spatial and urban planning processes channelled by the authorities.
• To help in the application and dissemination of new guidelines for intervention landscape and management based on the recognition that it is an asset of general interest and of value as a stimulus to local economies and development.

State of development

The landscape charters being developed in Catalonia are the following: