Content uploaded by Josep-Maria Mallarach
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Josep-Maria Mallarach on Dec 27, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Queries for Author
Paper: cabi.35013.007
The proof of your manuscript appears on the following page(s).
Please read the manuscript carefully, checking for accuracy, verifying the reference order
and double-checking gures and tables.
During the preparation of your manuscript for publication, the questions listed below
have arisen. Please attend to these matters and return the answers to these questions when
you return your corrections.
Please note, we will not be able to proceed with your article and publish it in print
if these queries have not been addressed.
No Query
AQ1 Please provide reference for this citation.
AQ2 Please note that reference Mallarach et al., 2016 is cited in the text but does not
appear in the reference list. Please provide the complete details for this reference
or delete the citation.
AQ3 Please provide full reference details for this citation.
AQ4 R5 Please provide an in-text citation for reference Harmon, 2007.
AQ5 R9 Please provide an in-text citation for reference 2008.
AQ6 R11 Please provide an in-text citation for reference Mallarach, 2012.
AQ7 R23 Please provide an in-text citation for reference Verschuuren, 2014.
77
© CAB International 2019. Tourism, Pilgrimage and Intercultural Dialogue: Interpreting
Sacred Stories (edsD. Vidal-Casellasetal.)
7 Revalorization of Europe’s Natural
Areas of Spiritual Value and Pilgrimage
Routes: Inspirational Tendencies
Josep M Mallarach1* and Josep Gordi2
1Silene AssociationOlot, Spain; 2University of Girona, Spain
*Corresponding author: mallarach@ silene. ong
Introduction
In an age marked by positivism and materialism,
in which technocracy is the predominant form
of domination and exponential growth trends
have created impacts of global magnitude, over-
coming the Earth’s biocapacity, it is reasonable
to suggest that we are in a new geological era,
the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz etal., 2008). In
recent times there have been interesting com-
pensatory phenomena to the ideological spread
of materialistic globalization, one of the most
paradoxical of which is the development, in
many European countries, of a set of tenden-
cies that share an interest in rediscovering or
revalorizing the recovery of natural spaces of
spiritual or sacred value. This circumstance is
of particular significance in those more secu-
larized countries that were the birthplace of the
materialism and reductionism that, by means
of political, economic and cultural colonialism,
have spread all over the world in the past two
centuries.
This chapter examines the evolution of the
sacred in the conservation of nature, together
with a series of reflections and initiatives relat-
ing to the conservation of the heritage of natu-
ral places of high spiritual value and the lines
that connect them, that is to say, the pilgrimage
routes. The section on inspirational tendencies
also considers a number of interesting devel-
opments in environmental education linked to
these landscapes, and these guide the final dis-
cussion, which centres on the need to expand
the perspective of the models for the governance
of protected natural areas that currently prevail
in most European countries and adopt more in-
clusive, fairer and more equitable approaches.
Since time immemorial, the European
continent has been criss-crossed by numer-
ous roads and paths that link or connect natu-
ral spaces with spiritual and religious values.
Since the birth and consolidation of the first
sacred places, these lines traversing the ter-
ritory have been consecrated and articulated
by means of a very diverse set of buildings of
a religious nature: megaliths, temples, sanc-
tuaries, oracles, hermitages and monasteries,
which we can call sacred nodes. These nodal
sites at which people paused and gathered and
the network of paths that unite them config-
ured an authentic sacred geography, one that
has been transformed over the course of time,
with both the sites and the paths being char-
acterized by singular elements that, in many
regions, have conserved their function from
prehistory to the present day. This system of
78 J.M. Mallarach and J. Gordi
nodes and linking paths forms an elaborate
network that, at certain times and in certain
countries, has unfolded to embrace sizable ex-
panses such as whole mountain ranges, lakes,
peninsulas or islands, considered as being en-
dowed with intrinsic values, holy or sacred
natural spaces extending over large areas. One
example would be the Montsant, in Catalonia,
which has a great number of shrines, hermit-
ages and monasteries, and these, together with
the sparse population and the verticality of its
cliffs and ravines, create an atmosphere that
justifies its name of ‘holy mountain’. Another
example is Meteora, in Greece, with its group
of monasteries dating from the Middle Ages on
sandstone and conglomerate pinnacles, where
natural rock and building come together in a
striving upward to the sky. That the origin of
such sacred nodal sites is earlier than that of
the cities is demonstrated by the oldest sanc-
tuaries in the world, like that of Göbekli Tepe,
the work of south-eastern Anatolian semi-
nomadic peoples of about 12,000 years ago,
long before the development of agriculture
(Schmidt, 2011).
The roots of this sacred geography are very
ancient and diverse, given that over the centu-
ries many cosmologies and spiritual traditions
have existed in Europe, often co-existing with
and overlapping one another. There are count-
less well-documented examples of this, such
as the church of Santa Maria dei Greci in the
Sicilian city of Agrigento, built on the remains of
a Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena,
which was built as an isolated structure on top
of a sacred hill or temenos, like the temples in the
nearby Valley of the Temples; indeed, fragments
of the temple’s Doric columns can still be seen
in the walls of the church. Another example is
the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel on the coast of
Normandy, erected on the site of an important
megalithic shrine on the summit of what is now
the island. Sanctuaries have been built and re-
built in sacred landscapes time and again, very
often reusing elements of the earlier structures,
in locations that have long been considered priv-
ileged in spiritual terms.
It seems that since prehistoric times it has
been an established practice for people to walk
to visit sacred places, in some cases for weeks or
months or even years, as attested by the numer-
ous pilgrimages that still exist in various parts of
the world among indigenous peoples, including
those that are living today in northern Russia,
such as the Nenets or the Sel’kup. The Latin
peregrinus means a foreigner or alien, someone
who has fled from their habitual familiar envi-
ronment. A pilgrim, then, is one who leaves the
security of home, family and community to set
out on a spiritual path, with faith and trust, but
with no certain knowledge of whether they will
return, or if they will reach their goal, and with
the conviction that if they do return they will
surely no longer be the same.
Spiritual Landscapes in the Course of
History
In the far north of Europe, and especially in
the northern Scandinavian peninsula and the
Kola peninsula of Russia, the native peoples
have lived in and watched over sacred land-
scapes of tundra and taiga for thousands of
years. In the Sami indigenous tradition, the
key concept of the maintenance of life (birge-
jupmi) applies to virtuous forms of relation to
the natural world and to the preservation of
personal and collective health, both physical
and spiritual (Porsanger, 2012).
In the Baltic countries too, sacred natural
sites linked to pre-Christian traditions abound,
as in the Maausk of Estonia, which includes hun
dreds of sacred groves or hiis (Kaasik, 2012).
Central and eastern Europe are especially rich
in sacred natural spaces associated with various
pre-Christian civilizations, such as that of an-
cient Dacia, which is kept alive in the Carpathian
mountain range.
The earliest Greek texts bear witness to an-
cient temene. A temenos is a sacred natural pre-
cinct on a mountain, on an island, in a lake or
in a forest, where in ancient times a sanctuary
was established, first built with mud or wood,
and centuries or millennia later with stone. The
mythological and religious traditions of ancient
Greece reverence innumerable sanctuaries in
nature, linked to a host of guardian deities, and
connected by a great network of pilgrimage
routes, especially to the major propitiatory tem-
ples and oracles.
The veneration of natural spaces unaltered
by any human intervention is a common feature
AQ1
79Revalorization of Europe's Natural Areas of Spiritual Value
of most European peoples during the Roman
empire, be they Celtic, Germanic, Slavic or oth-
er. The Roman historian Tacitus (1st century
ce) tells us that the Germanic tribes ‘conceive
it unworthy the grandeur of celestial beings to
confine their deities within walls, or to repre-
sent them under a human similitude: woods and
groves are their temples; and they affix names of
divinity to that secret power, which they behold
with the eye of adoration alone’ (Tacitus, 1942).
This prompted the Roman legions to cut down
great swathes of these forests as part of their ef-
fort to impose Roman culture on the Germanic
tribes. The poet Lucan, in his poem Pharsalia,
recounts the destruction of a sacred grove near
Marseille in which Julius Caesar himself had
to wield the axe on account of his legionaries’
fearful respect for the consecrated status of the
place.
With the Edict of Milan, the Jewish holy city
of Jerusalem, which had grown up around the
Second Temple on the hill of Zion, razed by the
Romans in the year 70 ce, rose again from the ru-
ins and became the first Christian holy city and
a place of pilgrimage for European Christians.
It should be noted here that, in addition to
Jerusalem, since the 4th century the Christian
pilgrimage has always taken in a number of nat-
ural sites associated with important moments in
the life of Jesus, such as the River Jordan, Mount
Tabor, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of
Beatitudes or Lake Tiberias.
An illustrious pilgrim who devoted much
effort to enabling Christian pilgrims to visit
the Bible lands in safety was Francis of Assisi
(1182–1226), who had always hoped to set
foot on the ground where Jesus walked. As the
latter period of his life coincided with the Fifth
Crusade, whose violence he deplored, he trav-
elled to Egypt to meet the Sultan, Al-Kamil. The
outcome of the unexpectedly cordial meeting
between Francis and Al-Kamil was the grant-
ing to the saint and his friars of a safe conduct
to visit the holy places (Tolan, 2009), which laid
the basis for the subsequent Franciscan custody
of the Holy Land, active until today.
Over the centuries, the Eastern Christian
churches have developed strong spiritual links
with nature. For example, in the Balkan coun-
tries they have consecrated trees (zapis) and
designated groves as excommunicated (aphoris-
meno) in order to protect them (Stara, 2012),
and kept alive sacred rituals with nature that
were already in decline in the Latin Church
and had all but disappeared in the reformed
churches. It is also important to point out that
Christian monastic communities following
rules of life such as those of St Basil the Great
(4th century) in the east, and St Benedict (6th
century) in the west, have faithfully protected
and managed extensive natural territories and
spaces in the most diverse ecosystems in Europe
since the fourth century, overcoming time and
again the traumatic effects of successive revolu-
tions, confiscations and disestablishments such
as those that occurred in many European coun-
tries in the course of the 19th and 20th centu
ries (Mallarach etal., 2016). Of note among the
natural spaces established with religious princi-
ples by the Roman Church are the Sacri Monti
of Lombardy and Piedmont, and the Carmelite
deserts, created on the basis of a 16th-century
model, initially in the kingdom of Castile and
Aragon, to accommodate contemplative retreats
‘in the presence of the beauty and harmony of
the universe’ (Ruíz and Husillos, 2008).
Natural spaces preserved for their spiritual
value were much more extensive in those terri-
tories in which the traditional communal sys-
tems of earlier regimes were maintained in one
form or another. A unique example is the auton-
omous monastic state of Mount Athos (Ágion
Óros), in the north-east of present-day Greece,
which has survived from the Byzantine Empire
to the European Union. Under the Ottoman ca-
liphate, Mount Athos was home to the largest
monastic community in Europe, with some 700
settlements and a population of up to 50,000
monks and hermits, established on a mountain-
ous peninsula, which has conserved more than
1000 years of monastic management an excep-
tional natural and cultural heritage, and was
listed as a Natural and Cultural World Heritage
Site (Speake, 2002).
It is also worth mentioning the recognition
accorded to landscapes with spiritual values in
Ottoman Europe, with a range of natural spaces
being preserved according to Islamic principles.
Some of these were centred on sites where the
Sufi communities of the Balkans (tekijes) were
gathered, in carefully selected and managed ar-
eas where each element of the landscape was
held to be an explicit sign of God and a tangible
support of the spiritual path (tariqa) of which
AQ2
80 J.M. Mallarach and J. Gordi
there are still notable examples in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (Hadzimuhamedovic, 2012).
Another type of natural space with spiritual val-
ues, administered under the waqf mortmain sys-
tem, and still found in some parts of Turkey, was
managed to meet social needs (orphans, widows,
mosques, madrasas and other charitable pur-
poses), and in some cases stewarded as a nature
reserves or hima. Last but not least are the sacred
natural spaces preserved by Alevi-Betkashi com-
munities and inspired by a vision of nature that
synthesizes several pre-Islamic cosmologies with
Islam. Rigorously protected natural sanctuaries
of this kind were present in Ottoman Albanian
and abounded in several provinces of Anatolia
(Lyratzaki, 2012).
This list of examples makes no claim to be-
ing exhaustive, but is intended rather to give an
idea of the diversity of religious and spiritual
motivations that have underpinned the conser-
vation of nature and the landscape throughout
European history.
The Impact of Materialistic and
Positivist Modernity
The majority of Europe’s spiritual natural areas
or cultural landscapes, actively conserved by
traditional systems of governance for centuries,
were seriously affected by the profound changes
that followed from the Industrial Revolution,
which originated in the 17th century and spread
across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries
and gave rise to a series of social, political and
economic revolutions. The massive confisca-
tions carried out by the new liberal states in the
extensive lands managed by religious organiza-
tions (which in many European countries man-
aged 20–35% of the territory) had devastating
effects on the conservation of nature and the as-
sociated spiritual values.
As materialistic reductionism spread, the
diverse yet co-existing traditional visions of na-
ture supported by indigenous, Judeo-Christian
and Islamic cosmologies, reinterpreted in many
countries by old folk traditions and Romanticism,
entered into conflict and steadily lost ground,
first in urban centres and subsequently in the
rural areas that depended on them.
The two World Wars marked a very impor-
tant break, the impact of which has still not been
studied from the perspective that concerns us
here. Many of the old natural areas and spiritual
landscapes were privatized or placed under pub-
lic ownership, the more fortunate becoming part
of a new generation of protected natural spaces
as national parks or nature reserves. Only a few,
generally isolated in remote places, were able to
retain the old traditional forms of conservation,
in a more or less precarious way, throughout the
20th century.
Traditional conceptions of nature were
reinterpreted in many countries, losing a large
part of their cosmic dimension, and this process
was rapidly accentuated in central and norther n
Europe, where the reformed churches predomi-
nated. The theological concept of Creation char-
acteristic of the three Abrahamic religions and
the ayat concept of natural phenomena as signs
or divine miracles in Islam, together with the sa-
cred vision of nature typical of Easter n Christian
churches, were all supplanted by the utilitarian
view, which sees nature as no more than a mate-
rial resource.
Mention must be made, however sche-
matically, of the political and economic causes
of this crisis. The accelerated globalization of
commerce in agrarian, livestock and forestry
products has condemned the rural economy
to ever-greater volatility and vulnerability and
damaged many local ecosystems. The predomi-
nance of economicism, which has engendered
a speculative financial economy concentrated
in a few hands, has weakened the real or pro-
ductive economy. Industrialization and the ac-
celerated mechanization of agriculture, animal
husbandry and forestry have impoverished the
diversity of rural landscapes and weakened the
resilience, security and sovereignty of the food
supply in most countries. The increasing subor-
dination of political institutions to the powers
that be, which operate through technocrats,
has been detrimental to the exercise of democ-
racy and to freedom of information, while the
implementing of ever more ambiguous, pro-
longed and complex mechanisms in the taking
of important decisions impedes transparency
in evaluating and establishing accountability
and facilitates corruption and the impunity of
interest groups in the agro-business, energy
and pharmaceutical industries.
81Revalorization of Europe's Natural Areas of Spiritual Value
Positive Turning Point
Reactions to the global destructive tendencies
grew stronger and more diverse throughout the
20th century. From the academic point of view,
a significant turning point was the publication
of the ambitious United Nations Environment
Programme study ‘Cultural and Spiritual Values
of Biodiversity’, with its numerous examples
from around the world, demonstrating that in
many places the conservation of nature has
been and continues to be intimately linked to
culture and spirituality (Posey, 1999). This study
marked the beginning of a new phase in policies
of nature conservation. The concept of ‘cultural
and spiritual’ values had a significant impact on
the subsequent policy documents and positions
of the most influential international organiza-
tions in the conservation of nature, such as the
International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) and the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
At the IUCN’s Fifth World Parks Congress,
held in Durban (South Africa) in 2003, repre-
sentatives of indigenous peoples from around
the world put forward a cogently argued critique
of Western technocratic approaches to nature
and denounced the injustices resulting from
the so-called ‘Yellowstone model’ of protected
natural areas, which has led to the forced dis-
placement of more than 100 million people
worldwide. This led the Congress to approve the
first recommendations to integrate cultural and
spiritual values into the strategies, planning and
management of protected natural areas, and
to set up a work group on the spiritual and cul-
tural values of protected natural areas within
the World Commission on Protected Areas. One
of the first outputs was the IUCN Best Practice
Guidelines for Sacred Natural Sites (Wild and
McLeod, 2008). The Delos Initiative, focusing
on sacred natural sites found in technologically
developed countries, has specially developed in
Europe. Since 2003 both the World Commission
on Protected Areas and the IUCN General
Assembly itself have passed several resolutions
or recommendations concerning the spiritual
values of nature (Table7.1), which are fostering
numerous initiatives around the world.
Although someone living in Western
European might have a contrary impression, at
present more than 85% of humanity have links
Table 7.1. IUCN Resolutions concerning the spiritual values of nature.
Year
Resolutions or
recommendations Title
2003 Rec. 13 Integrating Cultural and Spiritual Values in the Strategies, Planning
and Management of Protected Natural Areas
2008 Res. 038 Recognition and Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in Protected
Areas
2008 Res. 4056 Rights-based Approaches to Conservation
2008 Res. 4052 Implementing the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples
2008 Res. 4099 Acknowledging the Need for Recognizing the Diversity of Concepts
and Values of Nature
2012 Res. 147 Supporting Custodian Protocols and Customary Laws of Sacred
Natural Sites
2012 Res. 2012 Respecting, Recognizing and Supporting Community Conserved
Areas
2012 Res 5094 Respecting, Recognizing and Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ and
Community Conserved Territories
2012 Res. 009 Encouraging Collaboration with Faith Organizations
2014 n.a. The Promise of Sydney
2016 Res. 033 Recognizing the Cultural and Spiritual Signicance of Nature in
Protected and Conserved Areas
82 J.M. Mallarach and J. Gordi
to one of the great religions, and religious insti-
tutions are among the most resilient and influ-
ential organizations in the world (Palmer and
Finaly, 2003). In recent years many conserv-
ancy bodies, aware of the need to increase social
support for the conservation of natural heritage,
have promoted formal alliances and collabora-
tive ventures with religious organizations. Gary
Gardner has formulated this in a call for the total
commitment of ecologists and believers, and in
so doing has fostered interest in exploring the
contributions of other cosmologies, worldviews
and religions to the conservation of nature, in
the application of initiatives and biocultural ap-
proaches to the conservation of the natural her-
itage and to building alliances and cooperating
with religious organizations at the regional and
local level (Gardner, 2002).
Inspirational Tendencies
Among the most inspirational trends in the con-
servation of nature to have emerged in the past
decades, it is worth noting the following:
1. The evolution of the evaluation of protected
natural spaces from exclusively naturalistic
approaches to more holistic appraisals, using
trans-disciplinary approaches, including
the cultural and spiritual significance of
nature (Verschuuren and Brown, 2018),
often thanks to the incorporation of
landscape-based principles.
2. The gradual shift from approaches based on
top-down legal and normative frameworks
to others based on fundamental rights,
including the traditional codes, customs
and responsibilities of local communities
and populations (Verschuuren and Brown,
2018).
3. The evolution from the exclusive
consideration of material values towards
the inclusion of cultural and spiritual
values and meanings. The acceptance of
this latter tendency has entailed going
beyond merely tangible cultural attributes
to recognizing the importance of the
intangible cultural heritage (Berkes, 1999).
This change of paradigm has made way
for approaches that have demonstrated the
extent to which the spiritual meaning of
nature – with all the associated religious
values – has throughout history been – and
in many parts of the world is still –one of the
most powerful forces for the conservation of
nature (Harmon and Putney, 2003).
4. The rediscovery, revaluation and gradual
recovery of forms of spirituality linked to
nature, such as retreats with meditation
and contemplation practices in natural
spaces, walking pilgrimages, and so on,
with the incorporation, in some cases, of
practices from Eastern traditions, such as
tai-chi or qigong.
5. The greater visibility of the spiritual
values associated with nature, especially
in exceptional places, as a result of
international agreements such as the
European Landscape Convention (Council
of Europe, 2000) or the UNESCO Convention
for the Safeguarding of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage. These approaches have
led territorial planners and managers of
rural environments or protected natural
areas to take into account related intangible
factors, such as aesthetic, identitarian and
others.
6. The gradual recognition of the sacred
values of certain natural spaces and their
traditional custodians has made it possible
to develop forms of protection for these,
beyond the specific natural framework in
which they are situated. For example, both
the IUCN and UNESCO formally recognize
sacred natural sites and the roles of the
custodians that take care of them.
7. The emergence of national and international
guidelines oriented towards recognizing
these values and their incorporation in
areas of nature conservation. A Spanish
example is El patrimonio inmaterial:
valores culturales y espirituales. Manual
para su incorporación en las áreas protegidas
(Mallarach, 2012), and an international
example is the Best Practice Guidelines on the
Cultural and Spiritual Significance of Nature in
the Governance and Management of Protected
and Conserved Areas under preparation by
the IUCN Specialist Group on Cultural and
Spiritual Values of Protected Areas.
8. The recovery and enhancement of
pilgrimage paths, based on walking,
slowness, silence and peaceful enjoyment
AQ3
83Revalorization of Europe's Natural Areas of Spiritual Value
of the landscape. The last third of the 20th
century witnessed another unexpected
phenomenon in many European countries,
in the form of parallel initiatives to restore,
reestablish or revitalize ancient pilgrimage
routes in several countries, duly followed, at
the start of the 21st century, by the creation
of new pilgrimage routes, even in the more
secularized countries and in those where the
influence of Lutheran reform had eliminated
them. It is true, of course, that motivations
have changed. Apart from Eastern Europe,
where the religious and spiritual motivation
still prevails, elsewhere it is often combined
with consideration of health, leisure,
sports or even local development. Examples
include the revitalization of the Way of
Saint James in Galicia, the recovery of the
Via Lauretana and the establishment of the
Via Francigena and the Ignatius of Loyola
route in Catholicism, the Sufi pilgrimage
routes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some
Christian and Muslim inter-confessional
pilgrimage routes such as Mount Rumija
(Montenegro), the revitalization of long-
abandoned pilgrimages such as the one to
Lindisfarne (England), the massive growth
of historical pilgrimages such as the Rocío in
Doñana (Andalusia) or modern pilgrimages
linked to contemporary Marian apparitions
in natural spaces such as Lourdes (France)
or Fátima (Portugal), which attract millions
of pilgrims every year.
9. In the educational sphere, it is generally
accepted that the experience of children
in urban environments, with a largely
sedentary way of life, an excessive use of
electronic devices and little or no contact
with nature has pathological effects, among
which are increasing ecological illiteracy,
biophobia and a profound disconnection
from the seasonal cycles. For that reason,
more and more alternative models are
appearing, with the aim of restoring the
deep links with nature in order to live it:
to get wet, to get dirty, to get scratches and
scrapes, to touch, to climb trees … to explore
nature, and in so doing embrace practices
of interiorization such as meditation or
contemplation. In short, children are being
encouraged to live nature once more as a
wise teacher that assists us in our personal
and social growth (Freire, 2013). Various
European countries have transformed their
educational systems in order to impart the
school curriculum in natural spaces. By
2007, Denmark already had 290 schools
teaching in the open air, while Sweden had
420, and Germany over 2000. More and
more educationalists are insisting on the
relationship between nature and spirituality,
in teaching us to how to cultivate full
attention, serenity, intuition and inspiration
(Hueso, 2017). At the level of university
education it is worth noting the development
of initiatives like the postgraduate course in
spiritual values and meanings of nature:
perception, communication, management
and integration at the University of Girona,
Catalonia.
10. In leisure education, where contact with
nature has been better conserved, we
must emphasize the role of the scouting
movement – both religious and secular – in
promoting spiritual ties with nature, by way
of languages and practices in keeping with
local needs, cultures and conditions (World
Scout Bureau, 2011).
Discussion
Having attempted a brief sur vey of the historical
evolution of spiritual value in the conservation
of protected natural areas in Europe, and listed
some of the main inspirational tendencies, we
consider that the discussion may revolve around
the following core ideas:
• That institutions and organizations with
responsibilities for protected natural areas
promote the incorporation in the manage-
ment and governance of these of positive
attitudes towards and respect for all those
natural and cultural manifestations that
are based on spiritual values.
• The provision of guides and good practice
documents for managers of protected areas
and conservation organizations, drawing
attention to the extraordinary contribution
of the value of the sacred in the history of
the conservation of nature in Europe, to-
gether with the presentation of best practice
84 J.M. Mallarach and J. Gordi
examples on the incorporation of spiritual-
ity in management and governance.
• The creation of sensitization materials
(leaflets, handbooks, etc.) based on good
practices in promoting access to natural
spaces rich in spiritual values.
• The promotion of training in this area at
the professional and university level, pro-
viding both conceptual and practical tools
to overcome fragmented approaches and
ideological barriers to holistic approaches,
including spiritual values.
References
Berkes, F. (1999) Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management. Taylor &
Francis, Philadelphia, PA.
Council of Europe (2000) European Landscape Convention. European Treaty Series No. 176. Council of
Europe, Florence, Italy.
Freire, H. (ed) (2013) Educar con la naturaleza. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, Madrid.
Gardner, G. (2002) Invoking the Spirit. Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World.
Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC.
Hadzimuhamedovic, A. (2012) The challenge of protecting spiritual values of Bosnian cultural land-
scapes through Annex 8 of Dayton Peace Accord, Bosnia. In: Mallarach, J.M. (ed) Spiritual Values
of Protected Areas of Europe. German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Bonn, Germany,
pp. 47–54.
Harmon, D. (2007) A bridge over the chasm: finding ways to achieve integrated natural and cul-
tural heritage conservation. International Journal of Heritage Studies 13(4–5), 380–392. doi:
10.1080/13527250701351098.
Hueso, K. (2017) Somos Naturaleza. Un viaje a nuestra esencia. Plataforma Editorial, Barcelona, Spain.
Lyratzaki, I. (2012) Alevi-Betkashi communities in south-eastern Europe: spiritual heritage and environ-
mental consciousness. In: Mallarach, J.M., Papayannis, T. and Väisänen, R. (eds) The Diversity of
Sacred Lands in Europe: Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the Delos Initiative – Inari/Aanaar,
2010. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, pp. 95–108.
Mallarach, J. M. (ed) (2008) Protected Landscapes and Cultural and Spiritual Values. Values of Protected
Landscapes and Seascapes Series, No. 2. IUCN, WCPA, Fundació Obra Social Caixa Catalunya and
GTZ, Gland, Switzerland.
Mallarach, J.M., Comas, E. and de Armas, A. (2012) El patrimonio inmaterial: valores culturales y espir-
ituales. Manual para su incorporación en las áreas protegidas. In: Ed.EUROPARC-España. Madrid.
Fundación Fernando González Bernáldez.
Mallarach, J. M. (ed) (2012) Spiritual Values of Protected Areas of Europe. German Federal Agency for
Nature Conservation, Vilm, Bonn, Germany.
Palmer, M. and Finaly, V. (2003) Faith in Conservation. New Approaches to Religions and the Environment.
The World Bank, Washington, DC.
Porsanger, J. (2012) Indigenous Sámi religion: general considerations and relationships. In: Mallarach,
J.M., Papayannis, T. and Väisänen, R. (eds) The Diversity of Sacred Lands in Europe: Proceedings of
the Third Workshop of the Delos Initiative – Inari/Aanaar, 2010. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, pp. 37–46.
Posey, D. (ed) (1999) Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity. UNEP and Intermediate Technology
Publishers, London.
Ruíz, A. and Husillos, I. (2008) El Desierto de Las Palmas. Historia y vida. Gráficas Castaño, León, Spain.
Schmidt, K. (2011) Göbekli Tepe: a neolithic site in southwestern Anatolia. In: Steadman, S.R. and
McMahon, G. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Speake, G. (2002) Mount Athos. Renewal in Paradise. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Stara, K. (2012) Northen Pinods National Park excommunicated forests. In: Mallarach, J.M. (ed) Spiritual
Values of Protected Areas of Europe. German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. BfN Skripten
322, Bonn, Germany, pp. 69–74.
Tacitus (1942) Complete Works of Tacitus. Perseus Books, New York.
Tolan, J. (2009) Il santo dal sultano. L’incontro di Francesco d’Assisi e l’Islam. Laterza, Rome.
Verschuuren, B. and Brown, S. (2018) Cultural and Spiritual Significance of Nature in Protected
Areas:Management, Governance and Policy. Routledge, London.
AQ4
AQ5
AQ6
85Revalorization of Europe's Natural Areas of Spiritual Value
Verschuuren, B., Subramanian, S.M. and Hiemstra, W. (2014) Community Well-being in Biocultural
Landscapes. Are We Living Well? Practical Action Publishing, The Schumarcher Centre, Bourton on
Dunsmore, UK.
World Scout Bureau (2011) Guidelines for religious and spiritual development. Available at: http:// scout.
org/ es/ information_ events/ biblioteca/ spiritual_ development (accessed 22 January 2019).
Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Smith, A., Barry, T.L., Coe, A.L. et al. (2008) Are we now living in the
Anthropocene. GSA Today 18(2), 4–8.
AQ7
