Abstract
Context
The design of effective responses to safeguard cultural landscape values in Europe needs collaborative action among the stakeholders involved. Despite considerable progress triggered by the European Landscape Convention (ELC) and other initiatives to link landscape science, policy and practice, a joint research–action agenda is still lacking.
Objectives and methods
We respond to this challenge by identifying common priority questions for the sustainable management of cultural landscapes in Europe. To this end, we gathered, in a first phase, the most relevant research questions through a Delphi-like process with the research community in this field. In a second phase, the questions were prioritized by three stakeholder groups: scientists (Ss), policy-makers (PMs) and practitioners (Ps). The importance ranks and the similarity between groups’ priorities were calculated and analyzed.
Results
We found that the research question that addressed the issue of how to secure sustainable cultural landscapes where they are not economically profitable was the most important, with high level of agreement among all stakeholders. Alignment among the three groups was generally high; being higher between Ps–Ss and Ps–PMs than between Ss and PMs.
Conclusions
Our exercise can assist the implementation of the ELC by outlining the potential direction of future applied research and by strengthening the ties between the multiple stakeholders involved in the stewardship of European cultural landscapes.
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Acknowledgements
We especially thank the expert contributions received for the development of the questionnaire as well as the respondents to the survey for their valuable time and suggestions. This research received support through Grant 603447 (Project HERCULES) from the European Commission (7th Framework Program).
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Hernández-Morcillo, M., Bieling, C., Bürgi, M. et al. Priority questions for the science, policy and practice of cultural landscapes in Europe. Landscape Ecol 32, 2083–2096 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0524-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0524-9