System of Landscape-Level Cooperation through the Example of French Natural Parks

More than 50 years have passed since the creation of the first French Natural Park. One of the biggest tasks for the growing number of Natural Parks present in Hungary is to be the sustainable and resilient regional examples and guidelines of life in a way that they respond to the environmental, social and economic challenges of our time. The notion of landscape-level cooperation first appeared in the document titled „Professional concept of Hungarian Natural Parks”, approved by the Ministry for Rural Development in 2014 and prepared, besides other actors, by the Hungarian Natural Park Association. Act LIII of 1996 on nature conservation in Hungary, which was amended in 2018 and came into effect in February 2019, specifies the renewed definition of natural parks as cooperation. The concept of landscape-level cooperation is becoming more and more common also in Hungary and it is reflected, besides others in the increasing number of studies and researches in the subject matter which try to find the correct definition of this phenomenon (Szilvácsku Zs., 2012, Korom A., 2014, Dancsokné F. E., 2020). A lot of work has to be done to find the most adequate definition and establish the right regulatory framework and the basis of these can be the research activities benefiting from the examples and experiences of landscape-level cooperation already functioning or being in the pipeline. I would like to contribute to the definition and the frameworks of use of the concept by reviewing some of the specific features of the French natural parks. The functioning of French natural parks differs in many ways from those in German-speaking (Austrian, German, Swiss) countries, which are better known in Hungary. The overview of French experiences, the transfer and adaptation to the Hungarian conditions of knowledge accumulated in France has not yet taken place, similar to many other professional areas where, typically, we rather turn our attention to the German or, possibly, Anglo-Saxon countries.