As contemporary socio-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity preservation have become more important, the three pillars concept has increasingly been used in planning and policy circles as a framework for analysis and action. However, the issue of how culture influences sustainability is still an underexplored theme. Understanding how culture can act as a resource to promote sustainability, rather than a barrier, is the key to the development of cultural sustainability.

This book explores the interfaces between nature and culture through the perspective of cultural sustainability. A cultural perspective on environmental sustainability enables a renewal of sustainability discourse and practices across rural and urban landscapes, natural and cultural systems, stressing heterogeneity and complexity. The book focuses on the nature-culture interface conceptualised as a place where experiences, practices, policies, ideas and knowledge meet, are negotiated, discussed and resolved. Rather than looking for lost unities, or an imaginary view of harmonious relationships between humans and nature based in the past, it explores cases of interfaces that are context-sensitive and which consciously convey the problems of scale and time.

While calling attention to a cultural or ‘culturalised’ view of the sustainability debate, this book questions the radical nature-culture dualism dominating positive modern thinking as well as its underlying view of nature as pre-given and independent from human life.

This book explores the interfaces between nature and culture through the perspective of cultural sustainability. It focuses on the nature-culture interface conceptualised as a meeting-place where experiences, practices, policies, ideas and knowledges meet, are negotiated, discussed and resolved.

Series Introduction Katriina Soini and Joost Dessein Introduction to culture, sustainability and the environmental realm Constanza Parra, Inger Birkeland, Rob Burton, Katriina Siivonen PART 1: Livelihoods, cultures and practices  1. Sustainable Everyday Culture From Glocal Archipelago Culture Katriina Siivonen  2. Cultivating Cultural Sustainability in Farming Practices Katriina Soini, Suvi Huttunen  3. What can Culture in and for Sustainable Development Learn from Protected Areas? Constanza Parra  4. Culturally Sensitive Agricultures and Biocultural Diversity Claudia Brites, Pedro Mendes Moreira  5. A Matter of Context and Balance. Pre-industrial Conceptualizations of Sustainability Viðar Hreinsson  6. Roots and wings. Creativity and the Nature-Culture Interface Annalisa Cicerchia  PART 2: Planning and policies for cultural sustainability  7. Landscape Co-Management Practices and Power Structures in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Wachau, Austria Katharina Gugerell, Marianne Penker, Pia Kieninger  8. Adaptation and Cultural Sustainability of the Winter-Seining Community in the Archipelago of Southwestern Finland Kirsi Sonck-Rautio  9. Preserving Cultural Landscapes: A Cultural Sustainability Perspective Rob J.F. Burton  10. Terraced Landscapes: The Significance of a Living Agricultural Heritage Bettina Scharrer, Thomas Hammer, Marion Leng  11. Tourism and Sustainable Development in Rural Communities in the Black Sea Coastline Miroslav Ta?cu-Stavre  12. World Heritage and Cultural Sustainability: Farmers and Fishermen at Vega, Northern Norway Karoline Daugstad, Knut Fageraas  PART 3: Methodologies for cultural sustainability  13. Narratives, Capabilities and Climate Change: Towards a Sustainable Culture Nathalie Blanc, Lydie Laigle  14. Artistic Actions for Sustainability in Contemporary Art Exhibition Asthildur Jonsdottir, Chrystalla Antoniou 15. Media Aesthetic Methodologies: Analyzing Media-Stories of Nature and Wild Life Nina Svane-Mikkelsen