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This introductory chapter begins by defining the meaning of temporary waters and discussing their biological importance. It underlines the confusion in terminology associated with this diverse group of freshwater habitats, and proposes a unified classification system. It concludes by emphasizing the key role of temporary waters in the global landscape.

This chapter details the correspondence between the author and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding the release of information in line with the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time the chapter builds on an emerging body of scholarship that examines the relationship between American postwar ascendancy and “cultural diplomacy” in the early years of the Cold War and decolonization. Few studies have considered how the Congress for Cultural Freedom's (CCF) underwriting reshaped and refashioned the global literary landscape, altered the relationships between writers and their publics, and rendered those whom it supported more recognizable figures than others. These practices were conceived as part of an orchestrated imperial effort to occupy a global public space that by 1948 had been largely dominated by the socialist rhetoric of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).

Chapter 5 analyses the evolving conception and protection of landscape in the World Heritage Convention. First, it traces the development of landscape protection from its early conceptual dependency on nature, to the incorporation of ‘cultural landscapes’ within the Convention’s scope in 1992. It then discusses the typology of cultural landscapes, issues of representativeness and the implications of the Word Heritage system for landscape protection globally, as well as locally. In this regard, a number of cases are analysed which, on the one hand, support the World Heritage Convention’s instrumental role in landscape governance, but which on the other, highlight the problems involved in ascribing World Heritage status to living landscapes from a spatial justice perspective.

Chapter 6 discusses the origins and implications of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), the first international instrument solely dedicated to the protection, management and planning of landscape, adopted by the Council of Europe in 2000. It assesses the radical definition and concept of landscape espoused by the ELC as well as its institutional framework, before moving on to problematizing the ELC from a legal perspective. It argues that despite the Convention’s lack of legal bite, it has nevertheless been paradigm-changing for its societal influence and impact on landscape discourse more broadly. The chapter concludes by offering some observations on current proposals for a global landscape convention inspired by the ELC.

The final chapter of this book advances four main conclusions on the role of international law in landscape protection. These relate to state obligations regarding landscape protection, the influence of the World Heritage Convention and the European Landscape Convention, the substantive and procedural nature of landscape rights, and the role of EU law. It is argued that, although state practice is lagging behind the normative developments made in the field of international landscape protection, landscape has contributed positively to the corpus of international cultural heritage law and indeed has emerged as a nascent field of international law in its own right.