The project is a continuation of the IIC LANCEWAD project. The main aim is to enhance the cooperation with relevant governmental and non-governmental organisations in order to secure the development, management and sustainable use of the cultural heritage in the Wadden Sea Region (WSR). The final output will be a draft Integrated Landscape and Cultural Heritage Management and Development Plan containing a management strategy for cultural heritage, cultural landscape plans, sectoral and theme strategies and an action plan.

LANCEWADPLAN aims to extend an enhance the development, management and sustainable use of the common transboundary landscape and cultural heritage of the Wadden Sea Region. In particular the four aims are improved management of the area, sustainable use for a balanced development, increased awareness of the uniqueness of the area, and finally improved public participation in the development and management of the common heritage.

Expected Outcomes

The main focus of the project is a draft Integrated Landscape and Cultural Heritage Management and Development Plan for the Wadden Sea Region. This plan will include an integrated policy for the overall management of the region as well as cultural landscape plans as a basis for regional and local spatial planning. Furthermore, plans and strategies for specific sectors or themes, such as agriculture and tourism, will be developed as a contribution to sustainable management of the heritage, and a common action program for all stakeholders will be set up. Last but not least, a practical web-based manual of heritage management will be published.

Activities

First, a Strategy will be developed, based amongst other things on the recommendations of the previous LANCEWAD project. This draft Strategy will be submitted for adoption to the Wadden Sea Ministers? Conference in November 2005. Then cultural landscape plans as well as sectoral strategies will be drafted. State-of-the-art management of heritage outside the Wadden Sea Region will be used here as well as a basis for the development of a specific Wadden Sea approach. Finally, the overall plan will be written, including an action program of projects and activities for the future to ensure continuation of the project output. The plan will be presented and discussed at an international conference with all main stakeholders and experts plus several invited experts.

Reported Outcomes

Building up mutual understanding is one focus of LANCEWADPLAN, where views of diverse groups of stakeholders from heritage experts and spatial planners to farmers are taken into account to develop an integrated landscape and cultural heritage management and development plan for the region. Through this common approach, awareness of the landscape and cultural historic heritage is enhanced and the different sectors become aware of the economic benefits from sustainable use of the heritage. The project started to make an overall preliminary map of the prioritised cultural landscapes, as defined in the Council and Parliament Recommendation in relation to the landscape and cultural heritage. This development and management of landscape heritage model (ICZM) was a tailored strategy for the landscape and cultural heritage feeding into the development of the management strategy and the plan development in phase 2. Phase 2 elaborated the spatial planning approach tailored to the regional and local conditions in conjunction with the overall strategy in close co-operation with the responsible planning authorities, including a consultation procedure with a wider audicence. The final steps of the project has now began. Drawn from the experiences as mentioned above, the elaboration of the Integrated Landscape and Cultural Heritage Plan is now in process. Within the framework of and related to the cultural-historic landscape plans, the project has elaborated some 59 cultural entity descriptions. An additional output in the framework of the regional cultural plans is a handbook of best practice examples on how to deal with the cultural landscape and heritage in physical planning and regional development. The handbook will be web-based in the three languages and be subject to continuous update. The four sectors (agriculture, tourism, urban development and nature conservation) of which the developments have effects on the cultural landscape and heritage, have all completed their regional workshops. The result will be included in the overall strategy. The final output of the LANCEWADPLAN project is the draft Integrated Cultural and Landscape Heritage Management Plan for the Wadden Sea Region. The final draft integrated strategy will be introduced on regional conferences in spring 2007 and be made final in May/June 2007. Further information is available on the project web site: www.lancewadplan.org.