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Description
The European Landscape Convention (ELC), ratified by the Greece in 2010 (Law 3827), defines the landscape as a common good that affects the well-being and quality of life of citizens, who must be officially involved in its design and management. In Greece, to date, there is neither a comprehensive strategy for landscape management nor appropriate institutional tools for citizen participation, which is done indirectly partly through spatial planning and environmental licensing procedures. The LPPT project aims to contribute to the abovementioned needs, bringing to the fore the importance of landscape management and citizen participation. By creating an online toolkit to facilitate participatory landscape design and by implementing selected tools in two pilot areas as well as formulating proposals for inclusion of participatory processes in policies affecting the landscape, LPPT aims at the democratization of decisions at the local level and the implementation of the ELC in Greece. The project is aimed at civil society organisations and researchers that work on the fields of environment, spatial planning and other sectors that impact on landscape. At the local level, it is addressed at the authorities and communities in the two pilot areas; Prespa in collaboration with the Society for the Protection of Prespa (SPP) and Messinia, with the support of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Constantakopoulos Foundation (CVF). At the national level, it is addressed to authorities involved directly or indirectly with landscape management.
Summary of project results
The increasing pace at which the world around us is changing, the developments in the global market, agriculture, industry, energy, transport over the last decades have raised citizens’ concerns about how their local landscapes are affected. This public concern about changing landscapes has been answered by the Council of Europe through the creation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) which the Greek State has ratified since 2010 with Law 3827, in which public participation in landscape management is key to the process. However, in Greece, to date, there is no integrated landscape strategy and no clear participation procedures have been established.
Based on the concern and interest of citizens for the landscape and their inability to participate in the formulation of policies about it, since 2021 the project Landscape Public Participation Tools - LPPT has implemented a series of actions to facilitate active citizen participation. The nationwide survey conducted by MedINA in 2023 among 23 civil society organizations confirmed this condition, as 77.3% of organizations have taken action to protect and enhance the landscape but less than 15% have participated in the formulation of policies affecting it. The LPPT project focused its pilot actions in three (3) areas, where it applied and created new tools to strengthen civil society organizations for the promotion, management and protection of landscapes.
In Prespa, in cooperation with the Society for the Protection of Prespa, an integrated landscape approach was implemented through two (2) participatory workshops and interviews with the participation of 107 citizens and stakeholders of Prespa, in combination with scientific research, resulting in the formulation of landscape quality objectives and policy guidelines for the management of the municipality’s landscapes, which were disseminated to national and regional stakeholders and policy makers. In Western Messinia, with the support of the Captain Vassilis and Carmen Konstantakopoulos Foundation, a participatory workshop was organised with the participation of 12 people, resulting in proposals for the conservation and enhancement of the rural landscape. In addition, an educational activity with 20 high school students from Filiatra, titled “The Landscape of our Future” took place, so that the teenagers would be informed on how they can participate in the shaping of their landscape and claim an active role in it. This activity served as a guide for the creation of a manual for the educational programme “The Landscape of our Future”. In the Aoos area, the landscape approach was applied to analyze specific interventions by recording the views of 49 citizens on the landscapes of the area and their assessment of the impacts from the construction of Small Hydropower Plants (SHPs) on them. The tools used in the participatory processes in Prespa, 7 8 Western Messinia and Aoos are hosted along with others on a dedicated website (https://lppt.med-ina.org) created by MedINA to be accessible to citizens, organisations and researchers. The results and tools from the pilot actions and the nationwide survey were presented to policy makers from the Ministries of Environment & Energy and Culture, at a meeting held in Athens, and led to the formulation of MedINA’s proposals for the implementation of the European Landscape Convention and enhanced citizen participation. In total, more than 200 people, both ordinary citizens, NGOs members and institutional stakeholders, participated in a dialogue on landscape issues at both local and national level, formulating proposals for the landscapes of their future.