European Landscape Convention - The landscape award alliance of the Council of Europe (2015)

The European Landscape Convention is the frst international treaty on sustainable development based on a balanced and harmonious relationship between social needs, economic activity, the environment and culture to be exclusively concerned with the validation of European landscape. Its purpose is to promote landscape protection, management and the planning of European landscapes and to organise European co-operation on landscape issues.
The scope of the convention is extremely broad: it applies to the parties’ entire territory and covers natural, rural, urban and peri-urban areas, which include land, inland water and marine areas. It deals with degraded landscapes as well as those that can be considered outstanding. In other words, it recognises the importance of all landscapes, and not just those of exceptional beauty, as having a crucial bearing on quality of life and as deserving attention in landscape policies. A great many rural and peri-urban areas in particular are undergoing drastic change and merit greater care from the authorities and the public.
The Convention provides for a “Landscape Award of the Council of Europe” which recognises policy or measures which local or regional authorities or non-governmental organisations have adopted to protect, manage and plan their landscape, which have proved to be lastingly effective and which can thus serve as an example to other territorial authorities in Europe.