‘In an interview with Public Service Review, John Watkins, Head of Garden and Landscapes at English Heritage, reflects on the value and importance of public parks and green space:
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/article.asp?publication=Transport,%20Local%20Government%20and%20the%20Regions&id=293&content_name=Regeneration&article=8897‘

I’d still suggest that the functionality/ies of the land is / are more significant than its location… i.e. the big question is, who are the major stakeholders?

It’s been a good debate, thanks!
Hilary

PRIORITIES

Metaphorical Island journeys

Solitude Island 1 is uninhabited. Our priorities on arrival, dependent upon the weather, are food, water, shelter, heat and calling home on the mobile phone.
Thousand Island 2 is uninhabited. We are hotly pursued by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities on arrival are defence, food, water, shelter, heat and appearing unpalatable.
Refuge Island 3 is inhabited by a non-hostile tribe; we are hotly pursued by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities on arrival are diplomacy with the islanders, defence, food, water, shelter and heat. Assuming effective defence, we must then earn a living and obtain land for long term sustainability.
Yum Yum Island 4 is inhabited by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities are defence, food, water, shelter, heat and defence. Sleeping with the natives and lighting fires prove counterproductive.
Whatever Island 5 is inhabited by a tribe of cannibals; we are hotly pursued by another tribe of cannibals. Our priorities are prayer, defence and recipes for cooking cannibals.
Paradise Island 6 is inhabited by a sophisticated non-hostile tribe; cannibals were hotly curried a comfortable time ago. Food, water, shelter, defence and diplomacy are well organised and adequately supplied. Society provides opportunities for occupation dependent upon talent. We inherit and/or use earnings to purchase shelter. We pay taxes for defence and water and purchase food and heat. Organisation enables time for recreation. We have become familiar with indigenous monkeys and birds and protect surplus habitat for their survival. Many people prefer watching television. Size 0 is too small, drift into Size 1 and you are clinically diagnosed obese.
The next thrilling episode of Metaphorical Island Journeys will involve currency, exports, imports, regulations, balance of payments……… It is a sobering thought that had the occupants of Yum Yum Island been less effective at defence population would not be an issue in the twenty first century.
The successful provision of necessities over many generations can disguise their importance. Failure to ensure adequate indigenous supplies of food, water, shelter and defence would potentially leave a nation vulnerable to exploitation. These priorities apply to urban as well as rural land.

I attempt a brief definition to answer the question “What is Rural Land for?”.
Rural land is a resource to be owned and managed by the indigenous population to achieve the following objectives in priority order;
(a) Allocation to sustainable provision of necessities through market forces and essential intervention.
(b) Fulfilling livelihoods and a sustainable and excellent quality of life for landowners, occupiers and rural inhabitants.
(c) Restoration, creation and conservation of beautiful landscapes.
(d) Biodiversity through conservation of the environment.
(e) Variety in recreation for the responsible and not in conflict with objectives (a) to (c).
(f) Tourism at sustainable levels.

The next point that we have to appreciate better is that land is a more-or-less limited resource, there is only so much to go around, and that whatever we decide to use it for means that there will be less for something or someone else. The idea of a ecological footprint is a useful one, i.e. the amount of land that would be required to sustainably support our lifestyles. In Britain, the average ecological footprint has been calculated as 5.5 ha/person, but the biological capacity is only about 1.5 ha/person (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/), which means we are running at a massive deficit (×3.7, to be exact). For comparison, the global biological capacity is 1.8 hectares/person and the ecological footprint is 25% more than this. How long can we go on at that rate? An interesting question that doesn’t seem to have come up in this debate (pardon me if I have missed it) is that if each of us were given our share of 1.8 ha of land, what would we do with it, given that it has to provide us with food, water, clothing, fuel, waste removal, recreation, biodiversity, carbon storage, and all the other things we take for granted? Could we survive in the manner to which we are accustomed?

A final point – any debate on land use needs to consider not just how land is used in the UK, but also the impact that this will have on land use elsewhere in the world. The recent biofuels issue is a case in point – while the US and Europe strive to meet their biofuel targets, what is it doing to land use in the rest of the world? Causing even more deforestation in Africa as farmers clear land to grow maize and sugar cane for biofuels? Or draining of the peatlands in Indonesia? A recent study suggests that clearing 1 ha of Brazilian rainforest to grow biodiesel would release enough CO2 for the carbon saving in biofuel to take 300 years to cancel out (Science 319:1235–1238). Is this the right way forward?

The member States of the Council of Europe signatory hereto,

Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage, and that this aim is pursued in particular through agreements in the economic and social fields;

Concerned to achieve sustainable development based on a balanced and harmonious relationship between social needs, economic activity and the environment;

Noting that the landscape has an important public interest role in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social fields, and constitutes a resource favourable to economic activity and whose protection, management and planning can contribute to job creation;

Aware that the landscape contributes to the formation of local cultures and that it is a basic component of the European natural and cultural heritage, contributing to human well-being and consolidation of the European identity;

Acknowledging that the landscape is an important part of the quality of life for people everywhere: in urban areas and in the countryside, in degraded areas as well as in areas of high quality, in areas recognised as being of outstanding beauty as well as everyday areas;

Noting that developments in agriculture, forestry, industrial and mineral production techniques and in regional planning, town planning, transport, infrastructure, tourism and recreation and, at a more general level, changes in the world economy are in many cases accelerating the transformation of landscapes;

Wishing to respond to the public’s wish to enjoy high quality landscapes and to play an active part in the development of landscapes;

Believing that the landscape is a key element of individual and social well-being and that its protection, management and planning entail rights and responsibilities for everyone….”

(and so on)

For details of the Convention, go to
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/Conventions/Landscape/florence_en.asp

I had the privilege to meet John Seymour, author of various books in self-sufficiency & related subjects as well as practical philosophy, some years ago. In his later life he was very interested in the idea of “Distributism” – a philosophy which was propounded by leading thinkers including G.K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc & Pope Leo XII – Basically it encapsulates the idea that the land and the means of production from it should be owned by as many people as possible on the basis that people will always work harder and have more attachement to the land and take more care of it if it belongs to them. Whilst I’m not particularly promoting the idea or saying it’s practical, I think it’s an interesting idea! People might like to read more about it & there’s plenty on the internet..

Debates such as this are vital if we are not to close our eyes to important questions only to open them and find that ‘others’ have had the debate, taken the decisions and appropriated the ‘land’ for purposes that we subsequently don’t agree with. Rural land is not for any one thing and it is only for “whatever” if that is the decision that we take after the debate or if we consciously step out of the debate and leave it to others. If this is the case, like our apathy for voting, then we have very little recourse to complain about the outcomes. For too long rural areas have been the preserve of agriculture and the environment these two sets of “missionaries” have in a very real sense preached to society about what rural land should be used for, or not used in some cases. The debate and the questions posed by RELU are not “pointless” or “ridiculous” and neither does it seem problematic for the interests and positionalities of the respondents to come through in these answers. What else would we expect? Academics can and do raise important questions for society but surely it is not then our job to subsequently shut the debate down because we don’t like the questions? The questions, like RELU itself are experimental and designed to try and provoke and encourage ‘society’ [whatever this is] to think of new and novel ways to tackle both old and emerging problems in rural areas. This debate might ‘fail’ in one sense in that nothing new emerges but the bigger failure would not be to at least try in the first place- complacency does not strike me as an attractive option here.

There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers here and I certainly have no prescriptions for how rural areas should be used. However, I think the emphasis should be on movement and not stasis in these debates, they need to be kept dynamic as without the questioning rural areas will most likely find themselves in the hands of those powerful interests that have always dominated. The very fact of RELU’s existence and this debate suggest that ‘we’ are not entirely happy with how these have managed our rural areas in the past. As a final point for those of us involved in debates and issues surrounding water perhaps the debate could be widened to ask about the relationship between rural land and water- we could ask ‘what is our rural water for? What should we use rivers, canals, stillwaters, lakes etc for? And how can these uses be dove-tailed into what we decide for land?’