National Landscape Forum 2025

National Landscape Forum 2025 will 'Clarify Muddy Waters!'

As the LAI team lays the groundwork in Athlone for Ireland’s 15th unique Landscape Forum since first convened back in 1995, it is timely to ask if we are as clear as we need to be about the European Landscape Convention 2000 (ELC) – could it be that those landscape ‘waters’ have become somewhat muddied as a result of Landscape Convention Confusion?

The above image of ‘St. John’s Pill’, an often muddy tidal tributary - not of Athlone’s mighty Shannon, but rather the lower reaches of another ‘equally rich in Viking lore river - Waterford’s noble Suir, is more about landscape than scenery  and therein lies the first potential confusion! The ELC is about ‘The Big Landscape’ that embraces scenery - amongst many other landscape characteristics.

I captured the 1986 urban landscape image on the Waterside in Waterford where I had spent my early years through the1950’s/60’s . Like all landscape it had changed since I had last traversed that narrow bridge in 1967. Today that landscape has been further changed – the attractive curved bridge (known as the ‘Gasworks Lorry Bridge’) has since been replaced with a ‘more modern’ functional flat bridge accessing a car-park laid out over the grave of the Waterside Gasworks. I respectfully suggest that the changes since 1967 would have benefitted from greater lamdscape understanding and sensitivity!

The visionaries who conceived the ELC during the 1990’s were thinking about such everyday landscapes as well as scenic landscapes. Not so long ago every town and city in Europe had its ‘Gasworks Landscape’ – each providing a ‘light & heat’ public service and employment, each burning carbon fuel, each polluting our waters, land and air and each with a story to tell.

The ELC not alone recognized that all landscapes are in a certain sense equal and what we see is colored by diverse influences or social filters and suspect value attribution. Thus the convention very purposefully speaks of our perception of landscape as distinct from our more limited visual experience and that wise decision is central to its potential to guide each Council of Europe member state in responsibly protecting, planning and managing their landscape. But different perceptions, if not respected and shared can be perplexing and lead to confused landscape conversations.

The ELC in itself will not address the landscape impacts of developments or interventions, so simply listing either the ELC or it’s Irish implementation variant  the National Landscape Strategy (NLS) as a mitigation measure is meaningless unless both convention and strategy have been and are being dynamically integrated into both our landscape management and our our planning and development processes.

There would appear to be landscape convention confusion at many levels which is frustrating the potential of the ELC/NLS to inform and guide landscape management and the sustainable decision-making required when responding to landscape change.

Delivering on a wide-ranging strategy such as the NLS requires both talking and walking, in fact we need to both ‘talk the walk’ and ‘walk the talk’ if we are to achieve the stated aims and objectives.

Landscape Alliance Ireland has been facilitating such an action-oriented landscape conversation for 30 years now, involving over 2000 participants to date. With the support of DHLGH, MKO, Bord Bia, Westmeath CC and ILI it will further advance the process with NLF 2025 at the Sheraton Athlone Hotel on the 25/26th of September next. Book your ticket at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/national-landscape-forum-2025-tickets-1371185746479?aff=oddtdtcreator

Terry O'Regan