Criteria for sustainability and their application at a regional level: thecase of clearing islands in the Dubener Heide nature park (Eastern Germany)

The objective of this paper is to identify criteria for sustainability at a regional level (intermediate scale) for the evaluation of landscapes. The study site and the criteria were chosen while keeping in mind the situation in Eastern Germany, where the political change in 1989 has had tremendous influence on structures of cultural landscapes. These changes have been inv estigated in a rural area, north of Leipzig: Dubener Heide, This region now has the status of a nature part, so recreation and nature conservation hav e been explicitly added to the many functions of the landscape for the soci o-economic survival of the people living there. Agriculture used to be cruc ial in supporting these functions. The rapid decline of agriculture in this marginal area is endangering the income of farm households and adversely a ffecting nature conservation and recreation. To revive the multifunctionali ty of the landscape, agriculture as a main land user could be embedded in t he concept of sustainability, which itself has to integrate ecological, soc io-economic and cultural aspects, There is a vast variety of published crit eria for sustainability, but most of them relate to a very small scale (glo bal level) or to a very large scale (field level). To evaluate sustainabili ty on a intermediate scale (regional level), there is a need to derive crit eria from the local level by agglomeration and from global level by differe ntiation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.