Land stewardship is a territorial management tool led by non-governmental collectives which, through the signing of land and property use and management agreements with private owners, seeks to contribute to the safeguarding of environmental, heritage and landscape values, complementing the work carried out for this purpose by public administrations.
There are two key actors in any land stewardship agreement: on the one hand, the stewardship entities, which are organisations and groups of various kinds: non-profit organisations of different legal nature (foundations, associations, NGOs, etc.), or local administration actors (city councils, associations, consortia); and on the other hand, the owners of the land or heritage assets that make up the landscape, habitat or ecosystem to be protected.
Specifically, the landscape-heritage recovery project “Landscape-Heritage Recovery Project “Lands of the San Guillermo Convent” is an initiative promoted by the Chair for Citizen Engagement and Valencian Landscapes of Universitat de València, in collaboration with the Castielfabib City Council and two local associations (the Castielfabib Cultural Association and the Albar Association).
The project covers the geographical area around the ruins of the old Convent of San Guillermo, located on the left bank of the river Ebrón in the area known as the Convent, opposite the town of Castielfabib, in the Rincón de Ademuz region of the Valencian Community.
This proposal proposes to advance in participatory territorial management strategies that allow the conservation of landscape and heritage values, using the mechanisms of land stewardship, with the novelty that while most of the experiences in Spain linked to stewardship have focused on the safeguarding of habitats of vulnerable species, in this case, we are dealing with a project for the stewardship of landscape and cultural heritage.
The Landscape and Heritage Stewardship Agreement of the former Convent of San Guillermo came into force in July 2020, with a minimum validity of four years and legally protected, like any land stewardship project, by Law 42/2007, of 13 December, on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity.
Stewardship project area:
