
West Midlands National Park Lab
Our ethos
Our ethos comprises 9 integrated principles/values which guide our work.
These 9 principles are being adopted as inspiration and guidance for projects and organisations at the cutting edge of development and as a way to harness the landscape to meet the UN SDGs.
The landscape is the vast infrastructure upon which we depend, providing the context, resources and connection that are vital to our existence and prosperity. Landscape-scale thinking provides the big-picture which helps to cut across artificial boundaries and silos that make is increasing difficult to tackle the climate emergency, social inequality, water scarcity or institutional inflexibility.
We need to work beyond boundaries spatially, visually, ecologically and economically. The bigger picture demands greater geographic sensibility, context-sensitive knowledge and expertise to inform planning, development, transformation and assessment.
- prioritising quality of life and quality of the environment
- seeing the bigger picture by collaborating and crossing boundaries and silos
- strengthening the connection between policy and practice in finance and governance
- environmentally and culturally productive use and care of all landscape resources
- use of expertise to re-imagine the landscape
- supporting community pride, confidence and health
- learning from local and traditional knowledge
- creating environmental and community resilience through landscape-based culture, identity, stewardship and replenishment
- engaging all communities in the climate agenda, focused on transformative action