Caring for the Land [antikvár]

Stewardship is a way of relating to the environment that is as old as human consciousness. Caring for the earth is not new to Central Europe, where much of the landscape and its natural treasures have been shaped by centuries of human settlement. Only relatively recently has the long symbiosis between people and the environment in the region been strained.Since 1989, new techniques for landscape stewardshipmany of them first developed in North Americahave helped people in Central Europe restore their ties to the earth. Landscape stewardship has provided powerful new tools for preserving landscape and heritage. It also has served as a valuable instrument for rural development and community revitalization. Perhaps most importantly, and somewhat unexpectedly, stewardship has proven effective in fostering a vital civil society in the post-Communist societies of the region.Ten years since the 1989 revolutions, this report looks at the role that landscape stewardship has played over the past decade in addressing some of the challenges faced in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. It provides in particular an informal look at the impressive work undertaken by nonprofit organizations throughout the region.Many of the activities described here have been inspired, nurtured and developed with assistance from the Landscape Stewardship program developed by the Quebec-Labrador Foundation's Atlantic Center for the Environment and the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe. Their integrated program of fellowships, study tours, workshops, and technical assistance has involved hundreds of professionals and decisionmakers as well as dozens of organizations from North America and Europe. The Landscape Stewardship Program has been made possible thanks to generous support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Merck Family Fund, the French Foundation, the United States Information Agency as well as scores of counterpart exchange hosts in the United States and Europe.Much of the practical implementation of landscape stewardship initiatives in Central Europe has been supported by the Environmental Partnership foundations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. Since their establishment in 1991, the foundations have supported over 2,100 community based initiatives in the region. The work of the Environmental Partnership and its local partners and grantees has been generously supported over the past decade by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and over 40 other private foundations, organizations, governments, and businesses (see appendix for list of donors).