Abstract

The European Landscape Convention is the first international agreement to deal with all aspects of landscape planning, protection, and management. It emphasizes transparency, democracy, and good governance as integral parts of 'landscape'. The ELC may inspire member states of the Council of Europe to develop better tools for planning land use and the environment; however its utility in practice is still largely untested. This article considers the relevance of the ELC to a major land use conflict in Europe today: the development of wind power. Two countries are used as case studies of this conflict. Italy and Sweden both contain iconic European landscapes, and both have become important sites of large-scale wind power development over the last decade. But the two countries also have divergent political, economic, and institutional traditions. The debate around wind power and landscape has therefore unfolded differently in the two countries. The article consists of three parts. The first part gives an overview of the growth in wind power, and the forms that opposition to wind power have taken, in Italy over the past decade. It is argued that implementation of the ELC's clauses on democratic, locally-based landscape planning process will encounter in Italy a major impediment in the form of political and economic corruption. The second part summarizes the development of wind power as part of the Swedish national energy strategy. Using a case study of a wind power planning process guided by the ELC, it is argued that what appear to be common landscape values in local communities often conceal fundamental conflicts among individuals, groups, and institutions. On the basis of these two cases, the third and concluding part sketches both the potential of the ELC to transform the planning process for wind power, and the real challenges it will face, as a non-binding, 'global' agreement, in 'local' places with their own histories, traditions, and social actors.

Keywords

European Landscape Convention; wind power; landscape planning; Italy; Sweden; Sicily; Dalarna; corruption; heritage

Published in

Landscape Research
2011, Volume: 36, number: 4, pages: 471-485
Publisher: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

SLU Authors

• Hammarlund, Karin

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG16 Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels


UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2011.582942

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/45958