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Description
Czech Landscape is not flourishing. The reason is a long–term wrong management focusing on current profits at the expense of sustainability, that ignores the advancing climate change and its threats. Efforts for change struggle with their own fragmentation and resistance of different lobby groups preferring the status quo. The project’s main objective is to establish a Coalition for Landscape that will prepare a new Law on Landscape and create conditions for more sustainable landscape management. A petition, together with an advocacy campaign, will be launched to ensure a wide public support.
Summary of project results
The Czech landscape has many problems that ecologists or enlightened farmers and foresters have been pointing out for decades. Many of these problems will be exacerbated by ongoing climate change. The main problems include: soil without humus and soil life, low water retention capacity of the landscape, inappropriate farming methods, high use of pesticides, too large arable land, lack of small-scale structures in the landscape and the associated loss of biodiversity, monoculture and passive forestry, land development, etc.
The main causes of the problems include:
- inertia and conservatism in agricultural and forestry management
- the financial interests of big business and various lobbies
- a poorly set-up subsidy system
- the fact that only piecemeal changes can be promoted
Failure to address the above problems will lead to the exacerbation of serious impacts already evident today, e.g.:
- reduction in the fertility of agricultural land
- reducing the productive capacity of forests
- lowering groundwater levels and pollution
- reducing water retention capacity
- reducing biodiversity
and, in particular, contribute to global warming, while reducing the ability of the landscape to respond to climate change.
In preparing the project, we drew on our 25 years of practical and consistent work in this area and the recognition that without fundamental change enforced by law, nothing substantial will improve in the foreseeable future.
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From our point of view, the project had a clear positive impact on several levels. It has managed to influence the shape of the current CAP by strengthening
support for non-productive areas and creating initial conditions for the return of 10% of landscape elements to agricultural land, it has also managed to connect
with other NGOs and create a common platform, and the project has increased the overall capacity of organizations trying to promote systemic change in the
management of agricultural landscapes. To explain the impact of the project, we use an example from ecology - the impact to date is limited, just as the impact
of a small tree is limited. In the early years it has to take root, win the battle with grass and animals nibbling on it, cope with drought, etc. It is only when it takes
root deeper and survives the first few years that it can begin to grow stronger and one day become a large tree. This is exactly the stage we are at - our impact
on the environment is not yet as great as we would like. The topic we have chosen is a challenging one, there is a large lobby of opponents of change,
and it was a new activity for us. We therefore see the impact on our organisation itself as key, as it has managed to grow with this topic, overcome many challenges
and put down roots.
The main impact of the project is therefore the increased capacity of our organisation to continue to address this issue and to continue to do so after the grant
has ended.