The Florence Convention at the heart of the Council of Europe's work on Environment: the contribution of landscape to the realisation of human rights.

International Landscape Day is celebrated on 20 October, the date on which, in 2000, the Council of Europe Landscape Convention was opened for accession by the member States of the Council of Europe. This date is an opportunity to recall that for the Convention, all landscapes are important - landscape is not just a beautiful landscape or a landscape postcard; it is everything that surrounds us and that we perceive as our living environment which influences our well-being. Implementing the Convention means taking care of every landscape in every place; from pristine, to ordinary and also degraded, with an impact on our quality of life.

In 2024, the International Landscape Day is dedicated to relaunching the Convention, with a view to implementing the priorities on the environment defined at the 4th Council of Europe Summit of Heads of State and Government, held in Reykjavík in May 2023.

Among these priorities there is the Landscape Convention underlining that the quality of the landscape contributes to the protection of natural and cultural resources, the realisation of all human rights that determine well-being, the concretisation of democracy and social justice with respect to every living environment.

The 12th Conference on the Implementation of the Council of Europe landscape Convention (Strasbourg, 29-30 October 2024) will be an opportunity to relaunch the international cooperation of States Parties by ensuring that the implementation of the Convention makes the Reykjavík priorities a reality.