Forests provide crucial services for human well-being and economic development. They provide food, freshwater and fuel, support soil formation, regulate floods, climate and diseases, and can fill educational, medicinal, aesthetic and spiritual needs. They stabilize ecosystems, play an integral part in the carbon cycle, support livelihoods, and supply other goods and services that drive sustainable growth. Yet, forests are under stress from overexploitation, pollution, population pressure and the expansion and intensification of agricultural practices. With the additional impacts of climate change, forests are further threatened, and these adverse events may further impact land quality – leading to biodiversity loss, food insecurity, increased pests, reduced availability of clean water and increased vulnerability to environmental changes.
Read more »The Pond Area, a protected Natura 2000 site, situated in the heart of Belgium’s Limburg province, represent an old landscape that has been revitalised through the efforts of landowners, cities, nature organisations and the Flemish state. Together, these different groups have worked to restore and repurpose a landscape that grew out of the Middle Ages and now contains an extraordinary variety of biodiversity and landscapes – one can travel from pond to marsh to dry heath in 15 minutes by foot.
Read more »Can Landscape Stewardship really include restoration? Even more the concept of novel systems and their management? The upcoming workshops on the implementation of the European Landscape Convention in October have the sub-title “the landscape knows no boundaries”. That is true, but it is as true in time as it is in space, and that’s where restoration, and management of novelty, become important….
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