Opening speech by Rafael Benitez, Director of Social Rights, Health and Environment
State Secretary of Culture, Regional Minister of Culture,
Distinguished delegates,
Dear friends and colleagues,
First of all, I wish to express, on behalf of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, our sincere gratitude to the Ministry of Culture of Spain and to the Xunta de Galicia for hosting this workshop in one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Europe.
Ribeira Sacra, this territory speaks, before any of us has uttered a word, to the very essence of what the Landscape Convention is about: the living bond between people, culture and nature, shaped across centuries and now facing the pressures of our time.
A new institutional moment for the Council of Europe and the environment
We are meeting today at a particularly meaningful juncture in the history of our Organisation’s engagement with the environment.
Exactly one year ago – in May 2025 – the Committee of Ministers adopted the Council of Europe Strategy on the Environment, at its 134th Session in Luxembourg. This was a landmark decision. For the first time, the Council of Europe, as Europe’s leading human rights organisation, established a comprehensive strategic framework explicitly connecting environmental protection with human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The Strategy speaks plainly: a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is not a luxury – it is a condition for the full enjoyment of human rights by present and future generations.
The Strategy pursues five strategic objectives, ranging from the integration of human rights in environmental governance to the protection of wildlife, ecosystems, habitats and landscapes.
I wish to emphasise that the Landscape Convention sits at the heart of Strategic Objective 5, which calls for the promotion of sustainable landscape management, Nature-based Solutions, and ecosystem-based approaches.
But the Convention does not stop there. Its work – on democratic participation, on public awareness, on integrated governance, on the human right to quality landscapes – permeates all five objectives.
The Landscape Convention is not a sectoral instrument. It is an innovative transversal one. And this cross-sectoral quality is precisely what the Strategy on the Environment aims to harness – connecting work that was previously carried out in silos, building synergies between instruments and bodies, and ensuring that our collective action as an Organisation is greater than the sum of its parts.
Following the adoption of the Strategy, the Committee of Ministers established a new intergovernmental body: the Steering Committee on the Environment – the CDENV. Its first meeting was held just a few weeks ago, on 24 and 25 March 2026. The CDENV is a genuinely multidisciplinary body, and the Landscape Convention is already firmly embedded in its structure.
I am pleased to underline that Mr Antonio Antequera, who is with us today, sits on the Bureau of the CDENV as one of its elected members. His presence there – as Spain’s national representative and Vice-President to the Landscape Convention – is itself a symbol of the strategic connection we are building.
The CDENV’s programme of work is rich and ambitious. Its first meeting covered human rights litigation in environmental matters, access to environmental information, Nature-based Solutions, and the contribution of both the Landscape and Bern Conventions to the Strategy’s implementation.
Looking ahead, the Council of Europe will participate in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Mongolia in August 2026, in UN Biodiversity Conference – COP17 in Yerevan in October 2026, and in the UN Climate Change Conference – COP31 in Antalya in November 2026.
This speaks to something important: the Council of Europe does not stand apart from the international climate architecture.
It contributes to it – with its unique combination of human rights expertise, democratic governance standards, and treaty-based environmental instruments that have no equivalent elsewhere.
Protecting those who protect the environment
One of the most powerful expressions of this connection is the growing attention we pay to those who, on the ground, defend the environment – often at personal cost.
Later this year, on 3-4 June 2026, the Council of Europe will host the First European Forum on Environmental Human Rights Defenders in Strasbourg. This Forum will bring together defenders, civil society organisations, national institutions and international experts to address the threats, the legal gaps, and the protection mechanisms that exist – or that urgently need to be created – for those who stand up for our landscapes, and our communities against environmental degradation.
The Landscape Convention has always been grounded in participatory democracy and citizen engagement. The protection of those who give voice to that engagement is the logical extension of our commitment.
The Convention in the Committee of Ministers: a new visibility
I also want to share with you an important development in the Convention’s relationship with the Council of Europe’s decision-making structure.
Going forward, the Presidency of the Landscape Convention Conference will be invited regularly to present the Convention’s work to the Committee of Ministers and to exchange directly with Deputies. The first opportunity will be on 30 June.
This is a significant step. It means that the work you do – the national contributions, the recommendations, the good practices, the field experience will be brought directly into the highest political decision-making body of the Organisation. Your work will be seen. It will be heard. And it will feed into the political directions that shape our common future.
This is what the Strategy on the Environment called for: genuine mainstreaming of environmental and landscape perspectives across the whole of the Council of Europe’s action. We are building that mainstreaming, step by step.
Growing ratifications: a treaty whose time has come
Let me also take a moment to speak about the Convention’s reach – because the numbers matter.
The Landscape Convention is today one of the most widely ratified treaties in the Council of Europe system. And this momentum is continuing. Malta ratified the Convention in 2025. Just a few weeks ago, in March 2026, Albania deposited its instrument of ratification – a milestone we welcome warmly. We now count 42 Contracting States, and I want to express, on behalf of the Secretary General and the entire Organisation, our firm hope that we will soon reach full ratification across all Council of Europe member States.
But the Convention does not stop at the boundaries of the Council of Europe. It is open to signature and ratification by any interested State, reflecting the universality of the challenges it addresses and the need of transnational frameworks.
Strengthening links: partners, conventions and institutions
It is in this spirit of openness that I am particularly pleased to welcome among us today Ms Musonda Mumba, Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Her presence here is not merely symbolic – it represents the kind of inter-institutional bridge-building that our work increasingly demands. Wetlands are among the most climate-sensitive and culturally significant landscapes we know, and the dialogue between the Ramsar Convention and the Council of Europe Landscape Convention is one we intend to deepen.
I also warmly welcome the representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. Their engagement matters enormously.
Strengthening the links between the Convention and these bodies, and more broadly across the Council of Europe’s institutional architecture, is substantive: better coordination produces better outcomes for the people our Organisation exists to serve.
And it is at the heart of what the Strategy on the Environment calls for – a truly transversal approach that connects human rights, democratic governance, environmental protection and landscape management into a coherent whole.
A new political momentum for the Landscape Convention
All of this takes place against the backdrop of the Florence Declaration, adopted in October 2025 at the Ministerial Conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Convention.
That Declaration was a substantive political commitment: to use the Landscape Convention as a multilateral platform for addressing the triple planetary crisis; to promote sustainable, participatory landscape management; and to ensure that the Convention’s implementation is firmly embedded in the Council of Europe’s environmental strategy.
It recalled, importantly, that culture-based solutions – rooted in tangible and intangible heritage – offer valuable answers both for mitigating climate change and for supporting ecosystem restoration.
And then there is this workshop. The first since 2022 – after a four-year hiatus – with Contracting States represented, alongside expert contributors, Observers to the Convention and precious partners from international conventions, and representatives of key Council of Europe bodies.
That level of engagement reflects the fact that the Landscape Convention, after 25 years, is entering a new phase: more politically visible, more institutionally connected, and more urgently needed than ever.
Dear colleagues,
Landscape is, as the Convention tells us, an area as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and human factors.
It is the very interface between nature and human civilisation – and it is precisely at this interface that the climate crisis is most acutely felt, and where the most creative and durable responses must be found.
The Council of Europe has, through this Convention, been building a framework for landscape governance for over 25 years.
We now have a Strategy on the Environment that gives new institutional weight to that work.
We have a new Steering Committee that connects landscape governance to the full spectrum of environmental and human rights challenges.
We have a Forum on Environmental Defenders that will protect those who protect our shared environment. We have a Florence Declaration that provides renewed political direction.
We have new ratifications that extend our community.
We have growing institutional connections that make this Convention stronger. And we have the Presidency of our Convention now speaking directly to the Committee of Ministers.
That is a strong foundation. The moment is right. The conditions are in place.