I. Introduction

Europe has been manicured by human settlement for thousands of years. There are very few wild spaces left. Yet much of Europe is still covered by open, natural spaces; green spaces which are etched with the evidence of human influence and which bear the markings of eras of socioeconomic history, but which continue in modern-day use as productive lands. Shaped and cultivated by cultural and agricultural activities these green spaces are often reservoirs of biodiversity and examples of unpremeditated sustainable use. However, because of their day-to-day human occupation, their agricultural productivity, or because of their lack of historical significance, or evidence of antiquity, these green spaces do not habitually become the subject matter of natural conservation laws or of historic preservation laws. Nevertheless, in Europe these areas are frequently home to a great stock of natural and cultural heritage; of agricultural biodiversity preserved through a sustainable use that concomitantly preserves a visual amenity in which Europeans find their cultural identities. These spaces, although in human use, are as deserving of legal protection as a piece of untouched wilderness or an ancient monument.

This Article identifies legal avenues within European Community law that exist or that need to be forged in order to provide legal protection and governance to these productive green spaces. It focuses exclusively on the agricultural sector and on the uncovering of the relationship between traditional patterns of environmentally sustainable agriculture and the European cultural identity as visualized through the agricultural landscape. This is approached via examination of three broad subject matters: a review of the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD's) Ecosystem Approach determines whether that methodology is capable of providing governance for the historical and cultural components of the ecosystem; international and European historic preservation initiatives plant the seeds of the "landscape" model emerging through the European Landscape Convention (ELC); and finally, all elements of agricultural biodiversity conservation and agri-cultural landscape protection are accounted for and integrated into proposed changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).