NatureBureau - IUCN Parks

Biosphere Reserves: the network beyond the islands A decade ago, Biosphere Reserves were Category IX of the CNPPA Categories, Objectives and Criteria for Protected Areas, while natural World Heritage Sites were Category X. As the 1994 IUCN Guidelines for protected area management categories state: “Categories IX and X were not discrete management categories but international designations generally overlain on other categories”. A detailed paper on this matter can be found at: www.unesco.org This issue of Parks is devoted to Biosphere Reserves, established under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. Biosphere Reserves are defined as “special places for people and nature”. Many readers of Parks will be familiar with these reserves, recognised areas of representative environments which have been internationally designated to promote solutions to reconcile the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable use. They are nominated by national governments through the focal points for the MAB Programme and UNESCO in their respective countries. The added value of Biosphere Reserve designation lies essentially in the official recognition by a UN agency, linking with countries’ own efforts to meet their obligations under the conventions dealing with biodiversity. In particular, Biosphere Reserves can be considered as reflecting the “ecosystem approach” adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Increasing interest in transboundary Biosphere Reserves is a sign of their relevance and the wish for international recognition of countries’ joint efforts to conserve and manage shared ecosystems. In addition, the formal existence of the World Network, constituted by active regional subnetworks and national networks, helps countries to share information and experience within a neutral, culturally adapted setting. Since 1995, the World Network has been established under a Statutory Framework that sets the ‘rules of the game’ and makes provision for a periodic review of Biosphere Reserves every ten years to encourage them to meet the current criteria and objectives. General activities of the World Network are governed by the Seville Strategy for Biosphere Reserves. As of January 2001, there are 391 Biosphere Reserves in 94 countries. For full details, visit our site at www.unesco.org/mab Although Biosphere Reserves originated some 25 years ago, long before we used terms such as ‘biodiversity’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘globalisation’, we are finding that they are preadapted to help countries address the many issues those terms raise. ountries are using Biosphere Reserves increasingly as land-use planning and management tools, in effect creating a large-scale mosaic of areas with nested hierarchies of management regimes. Indeed, the Albany Conference in 1997, designed as a midway assessment between the 1992 and 2003 World Parks Conferences, pointed to the need to rethink protected areas in their broader economic and human context (wcpa.iucn.org/pubs/pdfs/AlbanyConfReport.pdf). It emphasised the “bioregional approach” to forming a conservation matrix using a range of protected area types. The new generation of Biosphere Reserves is a precursor of the types of flexible, large-scale co-management systems, seen by WCPA as an imperative for viable protected areas in the future. This new generation of Biosphere Reserves is an outcome of the 1995 Seville Strategy. In October 2000, a “Seville + 5” exercise was conducted to take stock of its implementation. Both these meetings were designed to obtain a maximum of input from the World Network, involving Biosphere Reserve coordinators, specialists working in Biosphere Reserves, representatives of MAB National Committees and several IGOs and NGOs. The “Seville + 5” meeting was aimed specifically at: Identifying priorities for attention in the overall Seville Strategy; Identifying obstacles to implementation at the international, national and site levels, and means to get around these and; Identifying emerging issues of importance for the future of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. This issue of Parks presents a selection of the presentations as illustrations of some of the questions raised. A series of boxes summarises different aspects of work in specific Biosphere Reserves. One box is devoted to the World Network and its component regional Biosphere Reserve networks. The Epilogue presents the main results and thoughts from this “Seville + 5”exercise. The article, by Michel Batisse, stems from a meeting on Alpine cooperation in the field of conservation, and spells out the complementarity between Biosphere Reserves and natural World Heritage Sites. It is included to meet the request voiced frequently at meetings of MAB and World Heritage to explain the similarities – and the critical differences – between these two old CNPPA categories! For the future, the World Network of Biosphere Reserves can help further the aims of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas by exploring and demonstrating how to ensure “benefits beyond borders” – the slogan of the 2003 World Parks Congress. The MAB community, and certainly our small Secretariat, look forward to working with IUCN and its members in preparing for this most critical of all World Parks Congresses. The Albany Conference, midway to Africa in 2003, adopted the slogan: “From island to networks”. Biosphere Reserves, as the following pages eloquently demonstrate, are indeed the network beyond the islands

Peter Bridgewater is the Secretary of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme of UNESCO. Before joining UNESCO in 1999, he was Chief Science Advisor of Environment Australia and was closely involved with the work of IUCN, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Whaling Commission and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.