Costa da Caparica, 12-16 September
Introduction
Worldwide concerns about globalisation, landscape change, biodiversity loss, climate change and climate justice are central to many societal and political agendas, demanding evolved forms of governance. Today in the coastal governance debate to overcome century XXI societal challenges, the discussion stresses the need for new modes of policy integration on which the coastal zone must be politically recognised from a socio-ecological perspective (Van-Assche et al., 2020). The contemporary debate on the landscape concept has also reinforced its role as a socio-ecological system in landscape research. The discussion has addressed the advantages of considering landscape as a vehicle for governance at different scales rather than exclusively an object of planning and management (Van Oosten et al., 2021). As a result, the systematic conceptualisation of landscape governance was introduced in the literature after Görg (2007), and it has gained a relevant position in the scientific debate. However, empirically, the debate in the scientific literature has predominantly centred on landscape forest restoration in the Global South, and its relationship with coastal research has not been explored yet. Indeed, literature on coastal landscape governance is almost non-existent (Gonçalves & Pinho, 2022), and even the discussion on coastal landscapes still focuses on their aesthetic qualities (Rangel-Buitrago, 2019). This abstract builds on the coastal and landscape governance debate for instigating a worldwide coastal landscape governance research commitment. Reframing the relationship between both debates will allow us to conceptually build on a manifesto for coastal landscape governance, exploring its added value to safeguard and enhance the coastal socio-ecological system and its governance structures.
Methods
The manifesto mainly concentrates on Gonçalves and Pinho’s (2022) systematic literature review, which focuses on the conceptualisation and operationalisation of coastal governance and landscape governance debates to advance the research of coastal landscape governance. Building on its literature database and key research gaps findings, the authors conducted a comprehensive review of the literature to expand it and set up this manifesto. The search was conducted in the SCOPUS database in May 2022, and the keywords for searching included “governance”, “territorial governance”, “European landscape convention”, “landscape concept”, “landscape democracy”, “landscape justice”, “regional design”, and “green infrastructure AND neoliberal”. The reference lists of retrieved articles were also manually searched. Only relevant English articles were included.
Results and discussion
The coastal landscape governance manifesto explores the main differences between distinct governance concepts that can operate in a coastal zone, particularly environmental governance, territorial governance, coastal governance, and landscape governance (Table 1). The definitions relied on and evolved from the governance concept to address the challenges of their specific objects: the environment, the territory, the coastal zone or the landscape.
Table 1: Selected definitions found in the review
| Concept | Definition |
| Governance | “all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, (…) whether formal or informal organisation, or territory, and whether through laws, norms, power, or language“ (Bevir, 2012, p. 1). |
| Environmental governance | “It is a process that links and harmonises policies, institutions, procedures, tools, and information to allow participants (public and private sector, NGOs, local communities) to manage conflicts, seek points of consensus, make fundamental decisions, and be accountable for their actions” (Haque, 2017, p. 1). |
| Territorial governance | “The formulation and implementation of public policies, programmes and projects for the development of a place/territory by co-ordinating actions of actors and institutions, integrating policy sectors, mobilising stakeholder participation, being adaptive to changing contexts, and realising place-based/territorial specificities and impacts” (Van Well & Schmitt, 2015, p. 13). |
| Coastal governance | “…an interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating and adapting to global and local environmental change and, in particular, earth system transformation, within the normative context of sustainable development”(Falaleeva et al., 2011, p. 785) |
| Landscape governance | “Place-based multi-stakeholder process of negotiation and spatial decision-making within its wider institutional context, with the aim of maintaining, enhancing or restoring the landscape’s functions, goods and services for the long term” Van Oosten et al. (2021, p. 1). |
The manifesto also delves into the landscape concept’s benefits and the latest knowledge advances made in the landscape governance debate by Van Oosten et al. (2021) to suggest a ‘coastal landscape governance’ definition. Then the authors claim why there is a need to increase the worldwide research on coastal landscape governance to address two particular and inter-connected crises: the landscape crisis (Antrop, 2017) and the climate crisis (Reckien et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2022). Finally, the authors present and discuss their manifesto for coastal landscape governance, exploring its added value to reframe the relation between coastal and landscape governance debates. The manifesto explicitly addresses the need to tackle all coastal landscapes and recognise them as socio-ecological systems. The role of the State to protect and enhance the coastal landscape as a common good is also explored, as the need for landscape justice through co-production and the relevance of pursuing transformative change. Finally, the manifesto also argues for the role of regional design in coastal landscape governance and the need to go beyond a Euroamerican theory.
Conclusions
This manifesto for coastal landscape governance reframes the relationship between coastal and landscape governance debates. It claims the main reasons why worldwide scholars must increase their theoretical and empirical research on coastal landscapes as an object and as a process to overcome the landscape and the climate crisis.
Acknowledgement
Carla Gonçalves was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Doctoral Grant UI/BD/151233/2021.
This work was financially supported by the Base Funding allocated by the FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CITTA – Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (UIDB/04427/2020).
References
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Bevir, M. (2012). Governance: A very short introduction: OUP Oxford.
Falaleeva, M., O’Mahony, C., Gray, S., Desmond, M., Gault, J., & Cummins, V. (2011). Towards climate adaptation and coastal governance in Ireland: Integrated architecture for effective management? Marine Policy, 35(6), 784-793. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2011.01.005
Gonçalves, C., & Pinho, P. (2022). In search of coastal landscape governance: a review of its conceptualisation, operationalisation and research needs. Sustainability science. doi:10.1007/s11625-022-01147-6
Görg, C. (2007). Landscape governance. The “politics of scale” and the “natural” conditions of places. Geoforum, 38(5), 954-966. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.01.004
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Van Well, L., & Schmitt, P. (2015). Territorial governance across Europe: setting the stage. In P. Schmitt & L. V. Well (Eds.), Territorial governance across Europe: pathways, practices and prospects. London: Routledge.
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