KC 2.2: Beyond the \u27war on nature\u27 and the \u27attacks on culture\u27: the CultureNature Journey through Rural Landscapes.

This session is part of the CultureNature Journey (CNJ) as it moves towards the 2020 GA. As required as a fundamental characteristic of the CNJ our session is a collaboration between IUCN and ICOMOS. It brings inputs from the Connecting practice project (Kristal Buckley), IUCN (Haifaa Abdulhalim) and the ICOMOS CNJ lead (Susan McIntyre-Tamwoy). This session moves the discussion beyond the binary concepts of wilderness as a desired ideal state vs farmlands as tortured nature. We avoid the romanticisation of rural landscapes that permeates defensive positions around agriculture and take a critical look at rural landscapes through the lens of the CNJ. We seek robust discussion on the value of rural landscapes in nature conservation and the challenge of managing cultural values in a world increasingly embracing the mechanisation of farmlands and buffeted by the impacts of climate change. We will present 3 provocative 5 min papers that seek to challenge and possibly confront the comfortable notion that permeates the themes as presented i.e. that rural landscapes present a natural marriage between culture and nature, with a view to advancing the ICOMOS IUCN discussion around this subject area. Each cafe table will be dedicated to a specific question/challenge. Participants will be given the opportunity to move to another table and bring cross fertilization of ideas. We aim to progress the debate around the natural benefits of cultural (rural) landscapes while simultaneously challenging our members over common assumptions. We will collect examples of CultureNature successes (and failures/challenges) which will be followed up with the participants post -symposium as part of a CNJ project to collate a range of case studies for web- based publication and launch at 2020. Intervention 1: Kristal Buckley, Deakin University (Australia) As a form of ‘continuing’ cultural landscape, rural agricultural landscapes have been identified as a gap in the representativeness of the World Heritage List. In promoting the consideration of such landscapes as heritage, the ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscapes (2017) acknowledges their importance to global food security, biocultural diversity, resilience thinking and the cultural rights of communities. Treating such landscapes as ‘heritage’ can include land management practices of varying time depth and origins as a palimpsest, but this opens wider questions about the purposes of heritage, and the limits of acceptable change, particularly when viewed alongside the needs to alleviate poverty and dissolve barriers to social and economic prosperity. Is documentation enough? What does safe-guarding mean in these situations? Case studies from Asia and Australia will be briefly presented as a means of stimulating discussion with participants. References: ICOMOS 2017, ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscapes as Heritage. Adopted by the 19th General Assembly, New Delhi, India. https://www.icomos.org/en/charters-and-other-doctrinal-texts Stockholm Resilience Centre 2015, Resilience Thinking. [online resource]. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2015-02-19-applying-resilience-thinking.html Intervention 2: Dr Susan McIntyre-Tamwoy This intervention draws on data collected in a project which looked at culturally diverse communities within the agricultural sector in far north Queensland, Australia and considered and sustainable natural resource use. Agriculture and horticulture in Far North Queensland have been dramatically shaped by Australia\u27s long history of migration: from the early Chinese and European migrants that cleared the land for cultivation to the Italian and Hmong communities currently managing sugarcane and banana plantations (May 1984; Reynolds 2003; Blackman 2005; Tapp and Lee 2004). Indeed, Australia is a multicultural country with nearly half of the population born overseas. This important demographic profile is often not taken into consideration when discussing land use issues, rural development, and natural and cultural sustainability. What implications does this history of migration have on the concept of heritage and continuity in regard to rural agricultural landscapes? The study yielded some surprising results which challenges common assumptions about the maintenance of cultural practices in the shaping of these rural landscapes. References: Blackman, S. 2005 Hmong Farming in North Queensland: A Study of Environmental Adaptation and Cultural Continuity, Honours Thesis, James Cook University, Townsville ICOMOS 2017, ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscapes as Heritage. Adopted by the 19th General Assembly, New Delhi, India. https://www.icomos.org/en/charters-and-other-doctrinal-texts Law, Lisa, McIntyre-Tamwoy, Susan, and Babacan, Hurriyet 2011 Culturally Diverse Communities and Sustainable and Sustainable Natural Resource Use. Report to Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, Cairns, May, C. 1984 Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns 1870-1920, Studies in North Queensland History No 6, History Department, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD. Reynolds, H. 2003 North of Capricorn: The untold history of Australia’s north, Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Tapp, N. and G.Y. Lee 2004 The Hmong of Australia: Culture and diaspora, Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Intervention 3: Haifa Abdulhalim, IUCN This intervention discusses the impacts of wars and civil conflicts on the Arab region and its natural resources. How losing the nature resources caused the escalations of the local community fragility and its resilience to these social, economic and environmental changes. These changes include changes in the lifestyle, sources of income, moving to other areas such as migrations. Consequently, it become necessary to discuss these new pressures on the natural resources by these changes and the required measures increase the resilience of those people to overcome their fragility, through developing different measures such as reviving or developing new techniques and or revive or revise the traditional techniques on how on best ways to benefit of the natural resources