Charter of the Landscape of the Americas

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IFLA Americas Council and IFLA Charter of the Landscape of the Americas Committee are very happy to share with you the Charter of the Landscape of the Americas. The original document in Spanish was approved in September 2018 during the Regional Council held in the Seminary of Mexican Culture (SCM), in Mexico City, Mexico.

The Charter of the Landscape of the Americas is part of IFLA Global Landscape Initiative developed since 2010 and proudly joins the African Landscape Convention, the IFLA Asia-Pacific Landscape Charter, the IFLA Middle East Declaration on Landscape Approach, all uniting their world voices to the European Landscape Convention developed in 2000.

The Charter of the Landscape of the Americas aims to enrich the reflection and understanding of landscape, providing a definition rooted in this landscape of the Americas, with scope and universal value.

Landscape: portion of a territory apprehended by sensory and intelligible experience of the individual and collective perception that is revealed in a unicum and continuum of living, natural and cultural systems, as a synthetic and interdependent totality, in space and in time.

The Charter is an instrument that guides the conservation, planning, design and management of the Landscape of the Americas, thereby maintaining coherence with international law, sustainable development, enhancement of the socio-cultural diversity, social participation as a necessary condition for the public policy planning, as well as to recognize the right to the landscape as a commons; concerns that are integral part of the work of landscape architects.

Recognize our diversity as a value unit, which distinguishes us and identify us as the continent of the Americas. The Charter of the Landscape of the Americas has the following guiding principles:

  1. To be comprehended as part of a living whole, as the first condition that precedes all other Principles;

  2. To recover the cosmovision and the vision of sacredness;

  3. To consider the singularities of the palimpsest of the territory in scales of space and time in order to reduce social inequalities and to maintain the identity of the Americas;

  4. To take up again ethics understood in its relationship with aesthetics;

  5. To (re-)discover the roots of Americanity as a condition for the future

We invite you to read the whole text in Spanish, Portuguese and English. A French version will come soon

Raquel Peñalosa, IFLA Americas Past President

Saúl Alcántara Onofre, President, ICOMOS, México

Co-Chairs Charter of the Landscape of the Americas Committee