During the UN Conference on Climate (COP 21), occurring in Paris, the third edition of the Global Landscape Forum was held, with more than 4000 people attending and 40 parallel sessions. The fact that landscape has achieved such an important place also in climate change policies goes together with the growing interest for the landscape approach at national and international level. A simple search on the internet would show that landscape as a topic has a much higher frequency than terms such as “ecosystem” in the published scientific book. Analyzing of the ideas behind the start of this initiative, a few years ago, it’s easy to recognize the will to put under a new label and more appealing label many old things. This was surely a smart idea, the only problem is that there were no real landscape experts at the meeting, nor the organizations working on this topic (e.g. UNESCO, FAO, European Landscape Convention), but mostly the usual guys working in nature conservation, ecology, climate change etc. One of the most interesting topic discussed during the forum is landscape restoration. This concept has many different souls and most of the projects presented were about forests restoration or about bringing back degraded environments to a natural state. However, as IUCN and GEF speakers have clarified, not only landscape is about people, but it has to do with an integrated approach combining economy, society and environment. It was also clear listening to the many interesting and expensive projects presented, the lack of a real landscape project behind them and also on what kind of an economy sustaining them. Planting a new forest or restoring afforest, surely affect the landscape, but to have a landscape plan is a different thing. In the same way lower C02 emissions, a stable climate or a green environment can surely be important goals, but cannot be presented as a projects for human society.
