A Value–Led Landscape Design as Model for Ethical Governance

How would a value–led landscape design leverage more equal and sustainable transformations in land governance and use? In light of recent changes in climate, society, and technology, inter and multidisciplinary collaborations as well as knowledge exchange have been increasingly recognised as strategies for tackling complexity. However, to have them as a guideline for new models of governance in landscape design, that transform education, regulation and practice, it is necessary to identify how to enable these strategies to generate positive impact at a human and nature level. Hence, ethics, for how it influences personal and collective behaviour, can be the approach for integrating collaborations and knowledge exchange in the design process. Furthermore, values like empowerment, diversity, equality and sustainability make ethics an applied method for transforming the way humans relate to the environment at a systemic level. Therefore, adopting values as individual and collective behavioural frameworks makes ethics a strategy for transformation, as it can guide society in adopting more caring interactions with the environment. Here, ethics is no longer a space for discussing issues and challenges, but a framework to critically engage individual and collective thinking in discussing how diverse forms of knowledge, both formal and informal, can develop sustainable governances guided by care. The harnessing of collective and diverse decision-making, as leverages for equal and sustainable societies, offers such a governance the capacity to plan more inclusively future uncertain scenarios. In these, people take responsible and active roles towards the environment through systems like education, regulation and practice.