Sacred Landscapes, Contesting Worldviews

“Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood water and rock”. (Simon Schama 1995)

Wageningen (NL): People give meaning to the nature and landscapes around them. In most cultural traditions, this consideration of nature has given birth to an environmtal ethic where natue is seen as sacred – one of spiritual well-being and creation.

EarthCollective’s Cultural Values & Nature Initiative (CVNI) hosted an evening at Wageningen’s Movie W which stimulated discussion about sacred landscapes and their role in contemporary management and policy. The upcoming presentation of the IUCN UNESCO Guidelines for the Management of Sacred Natural sites at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona Spain later this year were also discussed.

Before the presentation, CVNI Coordinator Bas Verschuuren highlighted how holy places or sacred natural sites can be seen as a manifestation of cultural spiritual values in nature and the landscape. These places are often havens for biodiversity, a social and spiritual mechanism which conserves nature in and outside of national parks. However, across the world, there are examples of where these places of rich cultural value are increasingly threatened.

The evening centred around the screening of the 2007 film “In the Light of Reverence” where director Christopher McLeod shows how passionate North American Indians try to protect their holy places and landscapes against the spiralling demand for resources such as timber, metal, water, recreational activities, new-age ceremonies and luxurious houses.

“All in all, the evening generated very lively discussion which ranged from the emotional to the rational in terms of arguments for basic human and indigenous rights” said Bas after the event. “The key point raised was contesting worldviews and the trade-offs between rights or responsibility-based approaches in conservation management.”

The evening was a result of collaboration between CVNI, Studium Generale, Movie W and the Sacred Land Film Project.