The Resilience of Cultural Landscapes

Landscapes represent dynamic, ever-evolving entities where the concepts of permanence, identity, and the safeguarding of cultural values necessitate the incorporation of co-evolutionary principles into their management strategies. Consequently, it becomes imperative to address primary and secondary threats, as well as factors that impact the Outstanding Universal Value of diverse UNESCO productive landscapes, in order to actively preserve them. To explore the associations and boundaries between enduring transformations and community-level identity within social resilience, a set of five research inquiries has been formulated. Two case studies have been utilized, namely the ‘Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato’ and the ‘Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces’. Both of these culturally rich landscapes have evolved organically over time, and they are linked through an institutional twinning arrangement among their respective management bodies. The outcomes of this investigation aim to identify potential risks to the continued viability of the agricultural systems, which could also undermine the integrity and authenticity of the sites. Hence, in order to establish an effective framework for landscape conservation, this study proposes landscape resilience as an approach to reinforce territorial inputs and processes, as well as to foster innovation. It entails managing attributes and values through the development of strategic plans that encompass both short-term and long-term actions.

This chapter presents several theoretical and qualitative features that characterize both the concepts of resilience and social resilience. Understanding them is fundamental to the proper comanagement of dynamic and shared cultural landscapes. Secondly, it discusses the primary and secondary drivers of change in worldwide UNESCO’s agricultural landscapes in order to integrate or update resilience tools in new and existing management plans. The scope is to build effective landscape resilience by stimulating the social component through a people-centred approach and local capacity building. It shows how communities have strong links with their landscapes and vice versa, where landscapes are made up of an interweaving of tangible and intangible heritage. Finally, concurrent strategies and actions are proposed from the short to the long term, taking into account the glocal, complex, Western context.

The chapter focuses on the qualitative analysis of landscape and its implications, considered as outcomes of a cultural process. Consequently, UNESCO cultural landscapes are analysed in the framework of the Western world, to which Italy belongs, and in the Chinese one. Literature review and remote, qualitative interviews with domestic and foreign scholars have been used to expand more on the different ideas contributing to the landscape-related concepts. The aim is to find parallels and bridges between the cultures of the mentioned countries and to define a possible common background for further discussions on landscape between the sites selected by this research (i.e. the ‘Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato’, in Italy, and the ‘Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces’, in China).

The UNESCO World Heritage Site entitled the “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato” has been introduced by examining the current driving forces of change. Both internal and external, they affect its system, structure, and characteristics. In the same way, its six components and the two associated buffer zones have been described by providing indications related to the local tangible and intangible permanences that characterize this Italian hilly landscape. Despite some major factors of change detected by analysing the SWOT analysis among the ‘Threats’ and ‘Weaknesses’ listed, as well as by the literature review, both the application file and the management plan do not include specific resilience-oriented discourses related to its social component.

Drawing upon the previous chapters, the significance of identity emerges as a crucial factor in the preservation and continuity of a cultural landscape. Consequently, gaining an understanding of migratory phenomena becomes pertinent for exploring future prospects concerning the social dimension of the socio-ecological system. In the context of the “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato,” individuals from North Macedonia represent the most prominent ethnic group in terms of population within two cities that fall under the purview of the UNESCO site’s six components. To shed light on their perception of the landscape in which they reside and work, qualitative questionnaires were submitted to these newcomers. Additionally, local communities were also invited to participate in the same questionnaire, facilitating a comparative analysis between the two social groups. Furthermore, the owners of wineries within the UNESCO site were included in the questionnaire to ascertain potential variations in responses between qualified and non-qualified participants. In total, 452 volunteers contributed their perspectives, highlighting diverse interpretations of landscape-related transformations. The findings reveal distinct patterns in terms of the sense of belonging and rootedness, perceptions of the local landscape and its alterations, the role of vineyard landscape management as a stakeholder, integration and community cohesion, as well as prospects for future generations in the medium to long term, and prospects for the present generation in the short term.

For an integrated management approach, the values and attributes associated with the World Heritage Site should find room for resilience in the processes that regulate the interrelationships between the different attributes. Consequently, several strategic objectives in terms of regulation, identity, culture, aesthetic perception, and monitoring need to be defined in order to plan activities and actions from the short to the long term. These fall into work programmes that have to be aligned with the objectives of the decision-makers in order to ensure effective territorial governance. Planning is an active part of this governance, which defines plans and tools for urban and non-urban areas related to the “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato“, Italy. The above is intended to benefit this productive landscape in terms of land use, overall image, and the local communities that live and work there, by integrating the resilience approach.

In this chapter, the “Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces”, China, has been first localized in the context of South-East Asia in terms of state, province, and county. Subsequently, this World Heritage Site have been analysed in its population mix, economy and agricultural activities, as well as landscape features. Election criteria have been introduced and how this site responds to issues of authenticity and integrity have been described and argued, as have the management and protection requirements. The management plan seeks to meet the expectations defined by the different Chinese rural policies, namely the Fifth-Year Plans for Economic and Social Development and the National Strategic Plans for Rural Vitalization, as well as those for the cultural heritage. However, despite the different issues that the Advisory Bodies found in their technical evaluation reports, there are no reference to resilience as a concept or as an approach in the management plan to face them in a holistic way.

The “Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces”, China, has been first analysed through a literature review to understand the current state of this World Heritage Site. Second, qualitative, semi-structured, and remote interviews with nineteen scholars have been carried out to complete the site-specific survey. The combination of the above has revealed both the permanence of the landscape in terms of structure and characteristics, and the various drivers of change. Among the latter, major topics such as depopulation, abandonment of rural villages and rice terraces, migration and newcomers, new crops or new techniques/methods of rice cultivation, integrity and authenticity in the component and buffer area emerged and pertain to this UNESCO rice landscape. They are helpful in understanding the nature and extent of these modifications that are affecting the overall image of this productive landscape seven years after its inscription on the World Heritage List, with the aim of ensuring its long-term continuation.

This chapter focuses on the necessity to adopt resilience as an approach for an integrated management system to continuously align the dynamic concepts of context, planning, inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes to the preservation of the Outstanding Universal Values that characterize a cultural landscape. The concepts of diversity, redundancy, network connectivity, modularity, and adaptability found in literature have been selected as central elements for an effective resilience discourse. They have been detailed by 24 actions and 32 sub-actions to help decision-making to preserve and enhance cultural landscapes. Lastly, the research reveals solid ties between identity and resilience. Site-based and place-related heritage, people- and community-centred approaches, living heritage, community-led changes, sense of place, and adaptation are crucial to achieving landscape resilience. In brief, this study provides for building landscape resilience as an approach for reinforcing territorial inputs and processes and fostering innovation. It manages attributes and values by planning work courses that include short- to long-term actions. Some hints for the management of ordinary rural and peri-urban landscapes have been also proposed, gathering suggestions from the debate on the UNESCO cultural landscapes discussed in this research.