In May 2010, IFLA's World Council agreed to support the development of a Global Landscape Convention and called upon the UNESCO to review the feasibility of a new standard setting instrument. The UNESCO, is undertaking a feasibility study to explain the need for a new normative tool in this area expected to be ready by January 2011.

There are precedents to build upon. One of the most notable examples is the European Landscape Convention (ELC). The ELC gives the landscape its proper status, not as the bits left in between the buildings, developments, highways and town centrescenters, or as a vague blanket cover that will look after itself, but as the context upon and within which these dynamic processes take place.

Elements of reference:

• Click here to download the text agreed upon at IFLA's World Council held in Suzhou, P.R. China.
• The European Landscape Convention: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/landscape/default_en.asp
• The Right to Landscape : Contesting Landscape and Human Rights
• La Iniciativa Latinoamericana del Paisaje (LALI)
  • Basic document in English, Spanish and Portuguese
• Florence Declaration on Landscape, 2012 : Final Declaration of the UNESCO International Meeting on "The International Protection of Landscapes" held in Florence on September 19-21, 2012 on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the World Heritage Convention
• The Shanghai Declaration
  
  

Landscape Charters:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Japan
• Mexico (Part 1)
• Mexico (Part 2)
• New Zealand
• Peru
• Venezuela (Spanish)
• Venezuela (English)

DOWNLOAD THE LEAFLET "TOWARDS AN INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE CONVENTION" (ENGLISH )
LEAFLET IN ARABIC
LEAFLET IN FRENCH
LEAFTLET IN SPANISH