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The concepts of “historically valuable landscape,” “historical landscape space,” “landscape space attached to an object of cultural importance,” etc. seem to be understood by most landscape professionals, yet these terms are highly abstract with many possible interpretations. The protected zone of cultural monuments prescribed by law helps to ensure the preservation of these historic artifacts and signifiers of local heritage. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper seeks to provide guidelines that can be articulated to protect cultural landscapes. These guidelines are based on a manorial core study was carried out in 2010 to analyze the changes in road networks and spatial systems of manors over the past 150 years. This study is part of a larger research effort on different aspects of Estonian baroque manor gardens.

Many landscapes may contain historically relevant objects and phenomena not protected by law, which, nevertheless form the basis of a unique local landscape. The altering of such a landscape not only changes its natural form, but may directly impact the cultural identity and milieu of the area, thereby affecting how its inhabitants relate to their environment.

Preservation of historic buildings and landscapes plays an important role particularly in relation to manor landscapes. This network has remained well preserved, and the rural landscape based on this Baltic-German manor culture is still strongly reflected in the current landscape through the existing historic landscape elements like housing, viewsheds, roads, etc. Without landscape analysis, it can be challenging for an outsider to understand the spatial context, especially when it has changed and evolved through the years.

This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 4 Issue 2 and its selection of papers.

The paper presents some of the ongoing discussions at the international level on the establishment of new United Nations global objectives for development, known as the Sustainable Development Goals, which should guide progress in the world for the next 15 years. Two agendas for wise heritage management are discussed, one for the protection of nature and the other for better use of culture, which taken together could make a significant difference in stewarding the world's precious resources.

While the previous Millennium Development Goals, established in 2000 as a set of eight goals with 19 targets, have been criticised as too broad, the current proposed Sustainable Development Goals, containing 17 goals and 169 targets to measure progress, are perhaps too many and too detailed and thereby risk failure of implementation. It also illustrates the ambition and the challenges of a pluralistic world with widely divergent priorities, reinforcing the idea of context-specificity of heritage conservation and resources management.

This editorial further extends on the discussion that was started in the inaugural Editorial, of 2011, which stated that “the international debate is expected to intensify as regards a re-orientation of the concept of sustainability and to re-emphasise its meaning in clear and unambiguous terms” (JCHMSD, 1.1:9).