Dear Colleagues,

Cultural and environmental heritage landscapes are tricky things. They are the spatial representations of every-day life, palimpsests of historical and cultural signs and legacies, embedded in contemporary occupied, living and working landscapes. They represent the intersection of the geosphere and the sociosphere.

Embedded in a global ethos, they still tend to reflect Western, colonial and modernist thinking. They represent conceptions of heritage and landscape from the North, imposed upon the South. They represent Western thinking about geoscience, social science and cultural studies, and thus are the articulation of Western establishment concepts and practices of time, place and space imposed upon Traditional and Indigenous societies.

As such, they present fascinating and tantalising challenges for landscape, natural resource and cultural heritage managers and planners.

This Special Issue calls for articles that explore the dilemmas inherent in the management of cultural and environmental heritage landscapes in the 21st century. The Special Issue calls for articles reflecting on the ways in which contemporary management – broadly defined – of cultural landscapes can simultaneously respect the cultural and environmental values implicit in the landscape and the people who live within that landscape, without reverting to 21st century colonialisation, displacement and continuing repression of the residents and custodians of these landscapes.

The Special Issue welcomes case studies, critical analyses and reflective essays that illustrate or explore these issues. Articles based in any of the disciplinary contexts – geoscience, social science and cultural studies – are welcomed. Articles that explore North-South tensions and Traditional or Indigenous perspectives on cultural and environmental heritage landscape management are especially welcomed.

Articles are invited from across the globe, in particular from majority world, the South, Traditional or Indigenous authors.

Prof. Dr. Bill Boyd
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geosciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Cultural heritage landscape
• Environmental heritage landscape
• Living heritage
• Geoscience
• Social science
• Cultural studies
• North–South politics
• Traditional society
• Indigenous society
• Heritage management
• Landscape management
• Protected area management
• Social politics
• Environmental politics