• Protection of environment.
• Promotion of sustainable development trough improved resource use
  and management.
• Conservation of European cultural heritage, including public transport and urban renewal.
• Human resource development through, inter alia, promotion of education and training, strengthening of administrative or public service capacities of local government or its institutions, as well as strengthening of democratic processes
  to support it.
• Health and childcare.
• Academic research.
• Implementation of Schengen acquis, support of National Schengen Action Plans,
  as well as strengthening the judiciary.
• Protection of the environment, with the particular emphasis on strengthening
  the administrative capacity to implement relevant acquis crucial for the execution
  of investment projects.
• Regional Policy and cross-border activities.

Description of the workshop/seminar including background and justification

The proposed project addresses activity 2-workshop and seminars and aims to strengthen the established bilateral links for long term co-operation between Poland (University of Agriculture in Krakow) and Norway (UNIFOB Environmental Research). In an European context and through academic knowledge exchange for the protection of the environment, the project will cover the area of the restoration and protection of waterbodies and cultural landscapes of mountain and highland river valleys. The project will in this way strengthen local administrative capacity for implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive and European Landscape Convention in both countries.

Seminars and workshops will serve as a floor for exchanging knowledge, scientific achievements and experience among active participation of scientists from Norway, Poland and Europe. The focus will be on interdisciplinary research on river ecosystems' and cultural landscapes' protection (biology, hydrobiology, ecology, geomorphology, hydrology, hydromorphology, spatial economy, land surveying, environmental legislation).

Background and justification

University of Agriculture in Krakow and UNIFOB Environmental Research have initiated scientifically cooperation for joint scientific ventures through international research funding. The parties arranged a meeting in Krakow (IV, 2008). The aim of this meeting was to identify common research interests, to prepare international project and to develop further scientific collaboration.

Both Poland and Norway experience rapid degradation and biodiversity loss at landscape, ecosystem, habitat and species level in spite of political actions to follow up international agreements and EU environmental directives. Both parties recognize the need to develop initiatives to mitigate loss in natural and cultural heritage caused by changes away from traditional sustainable land management. Although, on the overall level of understanding the same management regimes characterise culture landscape development through time in the two countries, the adverse forces of deterioration differ. While Norway is scarcely populated and has experienced rapid changes in rural economy the last 60 years, Poland rural development has in the same period gone through several stages due to its economic and political history. Further, the research tradition related to landscapes under human influence is different.

The seminars will be held in high river valley areas in both countries and local authorities will participate. By the active participation of administrative capacities the applied value of science and policy interface will be ensured. The program will in addition to lectures and discussion sessions also include excursion and demonstrations of local and regional river system and landscape management. The attention will be paid especially to the improvement of water retention capacity, anti-erosion soil protection, land-use change, restoration and revegetation, flood hazard reduction and land restoration.

The Norwegian partner has long been involved in interdisciplinary cultural landscape research while the Polish partner has emerged as a national centre of competence for cultural landscape studies related to river valley and river management. Strengthening the axis of cooperation through a interdisciplinary account regarding cultural landscapes of mountain and highland river valleys will provide a platform for further research cooperation also of other landscapes types.

Project plan

The project will arrange a series of two alternating seminars and one workshop held in Norway (two) and in Poland (one). During the first seminar, taking place in west-Norwegian high mountain fjord areas, project partners will talk over the current state of the art in cultural landscapes research and its relation to Norwegian and Polish conditions. Examples of the best implementation solutions will be selected in terms of their utilisation during cooperation activities in future scientific research. Based on bilateral discussion, the guidelines for report will be prepared, as well as the outline for website design. Due to the collective consideration of cultural landscapes principles and anticipated project products and results, the cooperation network will be significantly strengthen. Moreover, partners will during seminars and excursions successively discuss how executed modifications of chosen river valleys cultural landscapes have affected waterbodies and landscapes and their ecosystems. Emphasis will be paid to how pre-normative and normative implication of existing national and coming international policies may influence planning and conservation. In the following seminarp in Poland, that will take place in Dobczyce and in Raba river valley, the agenda will be linked to restoration and conservation possibilities of the Polish cultural landscape and valley river systems in the light of the implemented EU Water Framework Directive and policies and norms following the implementation of European Landscape Convention in Poland. Project partners will also debate on potential activities that may be attempted to raise the local and regional communities' awareness of river valleys cultural landscapes role in sustainable development. During the bilateral workshop, project partners will evaluate the progress in cooperation and will determine its future directions and research fields.

Invited international specialists in various disciplines will share their experiences, as well as case-studies, from other regions and countries to widen the scope regarding transformation and conservation of natural and cultural wealth within mountains river valley.

Partners

University of Agriculture in Krakow has been an independent higher education and research institution for 55 years. Before that, for 63 years it existed as an integral part of the Jagiellonian University. The University has 7 Faculties, 18 major fields of study and 36 specialisations, where nearly 13 000 students are educated. The Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Land Surveying educates students in three fields of study: Environmental Engineering, Land Surveying and Cartography and Spatial Planning. The University of Agriculture in Krakow is experienced in international project management and boasts suitable organizational infrastructure (2 units specialized in coordinating international projects).

The University of Agriculture in Krakow is very experienced in terms of international project management and boasts suitable organizational infrastructure (2 units specialized in coordinating international projects). The project Protecting Historical Cultural Landscapes to Strengthen Regional Identities and Local Economies within the EU INTERREG IIIB CADSES Programme was one of the more significant initiatives devoted to cultural landscapes, The University (the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Land Surveying) acted as the Lead Partner in it. It is also worth noting that this project has received the official support from the Council of Europe. The project coordinator was dr inż. Józef Hernik.

Uni Environment is a non-profit research organization, affiliated to the University of Bergen (UiB). The Norwegian research team at UNIFOB's Environmental Research Department are part of the Ecological and Environmental Change Research Group (EECRG), Department of Biology (BIO) at UiB (Knut Krzywinski is an Associate Professor at BIO).

Knut Krzywinski has been responsible for several large EU funded projects on cultural landscapes: Marie Curie Training Site (MCTS) CUTLAND (EU contr. No. EVK2-CT-2000-57128), working on past and present aspects of cultural landscape research and management. He also initiated and coordinated PAN (/PAN European Thematic Network on Cultural Landscapes and their Ecosystems,/ EU contr. No. EVK2-2001-00221) and the recently finalized CULTURE 2000 funded project "Our common European Cultural Landscape Heritage" (EU contribution), which among others produced the internationally awarded film "Fields of Demeter".

Attached to BIO and EECRG are infrastructures and competence centres: Bergen Museum, the UiB Botanical Garden, The Norwegian Arboretum and The Heathland Management Centre at Lygra - the first cultural landscape museum of Norway (awarded the UNESCO Melina Mercouri international prize for safeguarding and managements of cultural landscape 2001). Members of EECRG were also involved in the HEATHCULT project (EU project under the Raphael Programme), together with 15 institutions from 7 countries and initiated and coordinated the former "Lindas Project" — the first Norwegian interdisciplinary project concerning cultural landscapes.

Seminar

Press relases

Publication

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