What makes life good is one of humankind’s most fundamental questions. Given recent experiences of extreme droughts, soil degradation and a multitude of other existent or foreboding ecological crises around the world, there is increasing acknowledgement that human well-being is tightly linked to the natural environment. However, empirical studies that address this topic in a comprehensive manner have only recently evolved, most notably with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005). Following a landscape approach with a focus on the cognitive dimension of the human-nature nexus, the HERCULES researchers Claudia Bieling and Tobias Plieninger, together with Heidemarie Pirker and Christian R. Vogl, address this topic in a new paper in “Ecological Economics” (Bieling et al. 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.05.013).
Read more »I would imagine that the concept of ‘cultural landscapes’ is not immediately obvious to the average person. So why would the European Commission want to support a collaborative research project to protect and manage cultural landscapes, called the HERCULES project? Some clarity was provided at the first Stakeholder Workshop on the project, organised by the European Landowners Organization in Brussels late last month.
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