Nature Protection and Cultural Landscape Conservation

 

Both can be understood as natural capital of a certain area. Protected areas attain their goals by regulating man's encroachments upon nature and thus implicitly influence local development and possibilities for satisfying the local population's needs. Under the presumption that protected areas at least partially carry out their task of preserving natural capital, the following question is raised: what is their influence on the engagement of manpower, or in other words, on employment possibilities in a certain area.

   

Any encroachment upon nature must be planned and implemented in such a way that it is in no way impoverished by it. This is why directives, backgrounds and conditions for biodiversity conservation and protection of natural assets are to be implicitly considered in spatial planning, as shown in nature conservation guidelines. The latter correspond, in terms of their contents and intention, to the professional backgrounds for plan preparation by including the entire sphere of nature conservation. When nature conservation guidelines were prepared, we took into consideration a certain issue stipulated by nature conservation law (general and special part of nature conservation guidelines and maps), which is graphically shown on four maps and is supplemented by textual part with protection directions, guidelines, regimes and development directions. The introductory part, on the other hand, includes analytical chapters on key objectives and problems of nature conservation, on the implementation of valid plans and on the state and trends in the environment.

  

Nature conservation (or protection as occasionally used) is an activity the main goal of which is conservation of biodiversity and protection of natural assets. This dual function was introduced by the national Nature Conservation Law, by which the nature conservation activities broadened the sphere of their functioning merely from the protection of natural assets (formerly natural heritage) and protected areas to the entire nature conservation, since biodiversity conservation embraces, apart from protection of plant and animal species, protection of habitat types, ecologically significant areas and special areas of conservation, and landscape.

 

Among the main objectives of nature conservation in Slovenia are primarily the following: protection of natural assets and natural processes, reestablishment of damaged or destroyed natural assets, conservation of biodiversity (in situ and ex situ) at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, including founding of protected areas and suitable collections, as well as preservation, development and reestablishment of landscape diversity. The  key objection associated with spatial planning is, however, inclusion of measures for the conservation of biodiversity and protection of natural assets into spatial planning, into use and exploitation of natural assets, and into measures aimed at cultural heritage protection. These goals are attainable mainly through direct and indirect measures that have certain spatial consequences, such as: stipulation of natural assets, protection and establishment of smaller and larger protected areas, restoration of damaged or destroyed assets, stipulation of habitat types, and identification of ecologically significant areas and special areas of conservation.

The greatest nature conservation problems are: low respect for nature conservation legislation as well as legislation from the sphere of planning and encroachments into space, ineffective inspection control, encroachments upon space for which no legal  foundations exist in the valid planning and operational acts, illegal building, insufficient budget funds and lack of personnel in the sphere of nature conservation, numerous protected areas without managers and management plans, insufficient system of financial incentives and support in protected areas, and fragmented functioning by different sectors in protected areas.