AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO INTEGRATE A RANGE OF AGRO-LANDSCAPE VALUES AS PROPOSED BY REPRESENTATIVES OF VARIOUS DISCIPLINES

A Concerted Action has been initiated to discuss the assessment of sus tainable agro-landscape values in the EU. The objective is to find out how criteria and parameters can be defined that would help farmers, a uthorities and politicians to manage the agro-landscape towards sustai nability and socio/cultural appreciation. Such parameters should most probably consist of a general mainframe with compatible regional speci fications. They could eventually be a base for income support/cross-co mpliance type of payments that farmers receive for their landscape man agement performance. Referring to the papers presented in this special issue, an effort is made to integrate the values proposed by the wide range of participating disciplines into a consistent and knowledgeabl e system. This is done by linking the different values as mentioned by the participants to the human motivations, phrased according to Maslo w, that they are meant to serve. The disciplines present have been pro visionally clustered into three areas with two main issues: (1) enviro nment (resource conditions) and ecology (biological relations); (2) ec onomy (flows of finances and services) and sociology (participative pr ocedures); (3) psychology (appreciation and aesthetics) and anthropolo gy (history and ethics). In these three realms, they are perceived as representing a double hierarchy of priorities: from the environment on ward they represent the evolutionary option of basic human needs, evol ving from sheer survival to the development of the individual potentia ls (food first, then ethics). From the cultural aspect of ethics to th e environmental conditions they represent a more humanistic (humane), immaterial priority of ethical values, leading social and economic pri orities to their environmental impacts. From this effort, indications are derived pointing at options for a coherent system of agro-landscap e values, especially when seen in the perspective of sustainable land use. A table showing the various agro-landscape quality aspects is pre sented. Throughout this paper, the agro-landscape is perceived as an i ntegrated product of human actions, of agro-technical, political and m ental (ethical) character. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.