Multifunctional land use: is it a key factor for rural development?

The sustainable development of rural areas faces nowadays the challenges of global changes. The need to adapt land and landscape use to the new social, economic and ecological demands (non-farm activities, employment in rural areas, forest and agro- related tourism, real estate pressure, etc.) requires an analysis of the land multifunctionality and of the multipurpose land management strategies. The paper aims to review the concept of land use and landscape multifunctionality and to review the role of multifunctional land use in Rural Development Policy in Bulgaria.