To browse Academia. This presentation discusses the role of citizens in the management, maintenance and conservation of the cultural heritage of agricultural landscapes.
The Dutch situation is characterised by a strong bottom-up approach to landscape, with a significant role of citizens. Agricultural heritage such as coppice bushes, wooded banks, hedgerows and ponds are expressions of the past agricultural use, but the loss of their original function signifies that many such elements will disappear. Although they are made by people, and there are regional differences based on historical management, they are hardly considered heritage.
At best, different policies see them as small-scale landscape elements with mainly a natural function. Arrangements for management are therefore primarily intended to maintain natural values. Nevertheless, things are changing. Ever more such elements are considered heritage, trying to manage and maintain them as relics of the past and to promote awareness and change behaviour.
The role of volunteers, residents or landowners hereby is unmistakable, and the way they look at landscape is holistic. They focus less than experts on specific objects or structures, or whether objects are natural or cultural; in general, they seem to be more interested in the way landscape as a whole presents itself to us.
This is what they appreciate, and this is what they try to protect and maintain. What is also interesting is the knowledge the local people have of the ways landscape was used and maintained by their ancestors oral history. Are their initiatives supported by local, regional and national governments? Are they supported by heritage organisations or nature organisations? The presentation deals with these questions.
