The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, a public foundation of the Government of Spain, under the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs, Ana Leiva, today inaugurated the Seminar “Heritage, landscape and territorial sustainability”, organized by the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain (OSE), at the University of Alcalá de Henares. The opening and presentation of the seminar was also attended by the general director of the University of Alcalá Foundation, Arsenio López Huerta, and the executive director of the OSE, Luis Jiménez Herrero.

The seminar, which is part of the line of work that the OSE is developing through its Urban and Territorial Sustainability Platform, aims to share the work carried out by the different agents involved in the territory, from a broader perspective of sustainability. It is about establishing more balanced relationships between territories through a new approach, which integrates the recognition of the richness of local communities and ecosystems.

A “cultural” reading of heritage and landscape will make possible the emergence of new models of use and management of the territory, for the use of endogenous resources and sustainable development. However, for all this, it is necessary to have new indicators and management tools.

Heritage, landscape and territorial sustainability constitute, precisely, the three axes of one of the strategic lines of the Biodiversity Foundation, three axes intimately related to the work of man and his relationship with nature.

This line of work of the Biodiversity Foundation includes actions in the area of Biosphere Reserves and National Parks, the recovery of cultural assets of an ethnographic nature, support for farmers in their good agricultural practices related to water, the fight against erosion or the maintenance of traditional livestock breeds and management.

The OSE and the Biodiversity Foundation continue to walk a common path, since they share, from the beginning, the objective of consolidating a necessary scientific benchmark in the measurement of sustainability and in the dissemination of this concept in our country.