Barbara Fenni
School of Law, University of Camerino, [email protected]
KEYWORDS: Landscape, participation, stakeholders, citizens ABSTRACT
The following contribution can be characterized into two parts:
-The first focuses on the importance of the involvement of the territorial participants and the public in the processes of evaluation and planning of the landscape, considered not only as an individual perception of the territory but as a social representation of the same.
In particular, the actual consideration of the landscape as a social product, in which physical and anthropologic elements are intertwined with the history, culture and experience that link a certain population to a determined area, raises the necessity to individualize what the roles and the subjects are to involve in the decision making processes relative to the landscape and the techniques that render that participation effective.
On that point, the European Landscape Convention is decisive in imposing on the political and administrative decision makers the need to make use of the collaboration of specialists and experts but also to extend the participation to different stakeholders and the actual public who, by living with the landscape, are able to influence the construction and transformation.
-The second part of the work concentrates on the analysis of the different forms of participation and on the effective degree of involvement of the public regarding territorial and urban planning.
It appears from research, that the population, where involved, is often the protagonist of a “pseudo-participating” experience based, most of all, on the communication and exchange of information between the administrators and the local community that has nothing to do with a real and substantial inclusion of the public in the construction of the decision making processes with the possibility to influence them.
Nevertheless, there is no lack of commendable initiatives at the European level, which are pointed out at the end of this work as examples and stimuli towards a more effective participation of the public in the planning programmes chosen in their own territories.
The IV Ministerial Conference of the UNECE “Environment for Europe”, held in Aarhus on 25th June 1998, concluded with the underwriting of a Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making processes and access to justice on environmental matters.
The said Convention represents the first worldwide undertaking of environmental democ-racy, which places three fundamental rights such as information, participation and justice as the basis for sustainable development (Stec. S., Casey-Lefkowitz S., Jendroska J., 2000).
Participation in the landscape, territorial and environmental policies ceases to be just good practice becoming instead a compulsory and binding phase of every decision-making process.
Now, the European Landscape Convention, adopted by the Ministerial Committee of the European Council on 19th July 2000, rightly recalling the Aarhus Convention in its preamble,
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complies with this current trend aiming to acknowledge participation as a fundamental role regarding landscape planning choices.
One of the most innovative aspects of the European Landscape Convention consists in the recognized social dimension of the landscape, considered as by Art. 1, letter a), as “an area as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”.
The Convention considers such perception not only as a human answer to stimuli coming from a certain landscape but as an active factor able to define the actual meaning of that landscape.
This definition also puts at the centre of the actual concept of landscape the population’s per-ception of it, recognizing the human as a dynamic subject who lives the landscape, explores it, modifies it and allows himself to be so modified (Zube E.H., 1997).
In other words, the landscape derives its own meaning not only from the whole elements which compose it and from the relations between those elements but above all by the way in which they, who interact with that landscape, perceive its characteristics.The relationship between population and landscape can be examined from two perspectives.
The first is based on individual perceptions of the landscape, that is to say on needs and desires that different subjects have in its regard. Such needs and desires, although partially influenced by the social-cultural context of life, are essentially brought about through utilitari-anism (Tempesta T., 2006).
The second perspective through which it is possible to examine the relationship between population and landscape does not focus attention on individual perception of the landscape but on its social representations. From that angle the landscape is a sort of “social construction of cultural and symbolic value to which each individual not only attributes their own meanings but also the ones shared with the rest of the population or of the social group to which they belong (De Nardi A., 2009).
Such perspective is also found in the European Landscape Convention which, at Art. 5, letter a) defines it as an “essential component of people’s surroundings, an expression of the diversity of their shared cultural and natural heritage and a foundation of their identity”.
The landscape is therefore common goods that belongs to a specific cultural identity, to a community, to the citizens “but being citizens depends on the political community to which they belong. Being able to recognize the culture you belong to, identifying the cultural basis of your own political community, evaluating the means by which one becomes a citizen, acquiring the conscious-ness regarding the way by which one participates in the management of common goods, is the first and unavoidable step towards the possibility of the landscape becoming democratic” (Ruffato M., De Marchi M., 2009).
Considering the landscape as a social product makes it necessary to identify participants and roles in the process of the actual landscape production and of its transformation.
Politicians and local managers are certainly able to influence the landscape as they are the ones who adopt the planning choices thorough regulatory activities which more or less di-rectly tap the landscape. In the decision-making process the politicians are called to make use
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of other participants’ collaboration such as architects, city planners or other professionals who, being experts in the subject, must provide technical evaluations and, consequently, draw up proposals.
The involvement of the stake-holders in the different decision-making processes – even though in different terms and levels of participation – is becoming a general procedure that allows the interested persons to express opinions, preferences and aspirations, with an incisiveness which often varies depending on the level of the economic power of the interested group and on the different ability to organise lobbies.
If what the Convention says is true, that the definition of the policies and of the “landscape quality objectives” must be based on the “aspirations of the public with regard to the landscape features of their surroundings”, it is absolutely normal and even right and proper that among the subjects called to participate in the decision-making processes, are the citizens for the simple fact that they live in the landscape and so contribute to its construction and modification.
Even so, it is impossible not to notice a sort of resistance in giving effective space to their opinions, also because techniques and methodologies relative to the participative procedures concentrate more than anything else on informative and communicative actions rather than on effective inclusion.
The need to give space to the participation of the community actually comes from a more widespread disquiet towards the representative organizations of the government which, still today, are content with adopting consensual approaches.
Even the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Law, written by the Italian legislator in the Legis-lative Decree No 42 in 2004, provides in Art. 144, comma 1, where the procedures for the approval of Landscape Planning is forecasted, other than the institutional agreements between State and Regions and between Regions and Local Bodies, also the “participation of the inter-ested subjects and associations for the defence of widespread interests”. It is obvious how the Law takes into consideration, for the purpose of the participation in decision-making processes,
“strong” participants in the social system and practically excludes “normal citizens”.
Public participation, meaning participation of the citizens, has a very important role in a democratic society as it is essential in ensuring policies and decision-making processes are transparent and open to the citizens regarding the responsibility of the decision-makers.
Considered as one of the pillars of a “quality democracy”(Morlino L., 2003), participation “in-serts itself so deeply into the idea of democracy that it represents one of its most relevant measures”
(Ropelato D., 2013).
On the other hand the choice of participation answers an irrepressible human need to “take part” and “feel part” of a community and at a public level implicates not only the adoption of a procedure or an instrument to allow the sharing of an objective but also and above all means giving space to the care and construction of that same community.
The participative dynamics impose on a civil society a “widespread sovereignty, in which there exists not only the abstract citizen, bearer of an electoral vote equal to the others, but the concrete person, with their own history, values, family social and religious membership”(Baggio A.M., 1994).
What has been said also finds confirmation in the Plans of the “Agenda 21” for sustainable
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015development of territories which link the ability to produce efficient policies to the improve-ment of the competences and know-how that are preserved inside the nets of society.
The effective participation in the decision-making processes by all the social participants ensures that the decisions are based on shared knowledge, consolidated experiences and sci-entific evidence and are influenced by the people who can be directly penalized or benefitted by a project, plan or programme.
Furthermore, participation, especially if activated from the first phases of programming makes it possible to find better shared solutions and reduce possible conflicts.
Unfortunately there are some sectors where effective participation in decision-making pro-cesses by the citizens finds application with difficulty and territorial and urban planning is one of the areas in which the loudly advocated participation hasn’t been able, at least until now, to break up that consolidated practice which sees a decision-making process participated in by only three groups: technicians, administrators and investors. A decision-making model, this one, more advanced than the technical-bureaucratic one where power is an exclusive pre-rogative of administrators and technicians, but it far from guarantees effective participation of the citizens in planning choices and territorial programming.
A deeper analysis of the citizens’ role in processes of definition of functions, localizations, of strategies in management, development, transformation and area reclamation, shows the low level of involvement of the same citizens in such processes.
To improve the quality of the participation processes, systems have been elaborated, in the past few years, of participation measurement, considered both as a method and as an objec-tive. As a method, it can be defined as the process by which the social participants and the communities cooperate and collaborate in the realisation of projects, programmes and plans.
The participation develops through various phases of the decision-making process and at different levels of society, taking different forms which range from simple consultations to cooperative decisions.
As an objective, participation is a process which strengthens the local participants and com-munities through the acquisition of ability, knowledge and experience (Arnstein S., 1969). The evaluation of the participation regards three aspects:
• the level of inclusion, that is who has been involved and what has been the role taken on by the different participants;
• costs and benefits of the participation for the different stake-holders: trying to understand whether participants who have evident interests have participated, if those who partici-pated have derived benefit from it or if the participation of some participants was some-how hampered;
• the impact of the participation on the formulation, performance and results of the decisions, plans and programmes.
Despite the difficulties in realising an inclusive participation of the citizens regarding the choices of landscape planning and programming, some steps forward have been made.
A praiseworthy example of it is the constitution of the Observatory of the Landscape in Catalonia, structured as a Consulting Body of the Regional Catalonian Government and of
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015the civil society for landscape matters, a meeting point for the administration, the universities, the professional sectors and the citizens regarding all areas directly or indirectly concerning the landscape.
Among its main functions, the Observatory establishes the criteria for the adoption of the protection measures, management and planning of the landscape, to identify the objectives of the landscape quality and the necessary actions to achieve them, to promote campaigns of social sensitization towards the landscape.
Another interesting experience is constituted by the Centre of Landscape and Territory Stud-ies in Andalusia, which represents the consolidation of an important form of dialogue be-tween the administration and the world of research into landscape themes. The said Centre of Studies has the function of guaranteeing the exchange of experiences, knowledge and opinions, during the production of Laws regarding projects and plans that can have effects or are directly related to the landscape.
References
Arnstein S., 1969, “A ledder of Citizen Participation”, in Journal of the American Planning Association, 35 (4), 216-224.
Baggio A.M.,1994, “Sovranità in crisi”, in Città Nuova, n. 10, 46.
De Nardi A., 2009, “Paesaggio e popolazione: percezioni individuali e rappresentazioni sociali”, in Castiglioni B. e De Marchi M., Di chi è il paesaggio? La partecipazione degli attori nella individuazione, valutazione e pianificazione, in www.researchgate.net.
Morlino L., 2003, “Democrazia e democratizzazioni”, Bologna, il Mulino.
Ropelato D., 2013, “Qualità della democrazia. Nuovi scenari della ricerca”, in www.oikonomia.it.
Ruffato M., De Marchi M., 2009, Levantado do chão: identità e paesaggi della cittadinanza,”, in Castiglioni B. e De marchi M., Di chi è il paesaggio? La partecipazione degli attori nella individuazione, valutazione e pianificazione, in www.researchgate.net.
Tempesta T., 2006, “La valutazione del paesaggio”, in Marangon F., (edited by), Gli interventi paesaggistico-ambientali nelle politiche regionali di sviluppo rurale, Franco Angeli.
Stec. S., Casey-Lefkowitz S., Jendroska J., 2000, “The Aarhus Convention: an implementation guide”, United Nations, New York and Geneva.
Zube E.H., 1997, “Perceived land use patterns and landscape values”, in Landscape ecology, 1(1), 37-45.
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