Biosphere Reserves

Abstract

Biosphere reserves are natural protected areas included in a global network organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). To qualify for acceptance as a biosphere reserve, a protected area must have global or regional significance for biological conservation, one or more inviolate core zones, and one or more surrounding buffer zones where human communities utilize natural resources in ecologically sustainable ways. The overall goal of biosphere reserves is the protection of biological diversity, but they differ from strictly protected areas such as national parks and wilderness areas by accepting human settlement as a feature of the landscape. Because biosphere reserves are intended to emerge from a participatory process with local communities and natural resource harvesters, they have social, as well as spatial, components. Interest groups—or stakeholders—affected by the reserve may be invited to participate in planning the biosphere reserve's design and management. Sites selected by UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program for inclusion in the biosphere reserve network are intended to carry out three basic functions: conservation, development, and logistic support for research, education, and monitoring. The term biosphere reserve emerged during a 1969 UNESCO-sponsored gathering of 80 scientists from 30 countries, aimed at coordinating a worldwide network of protected areas to ensure the conservation of genetic resources. From its first list of 57 sites in 1976, the biosphere reserve network grew by 2000 to 368 biosphere reserves in 91 countries. Because they are designed to be relevant to human needs, biosphere reserves have helped make the conservation of biological diversity more scientific, more systematic, and more socially and economically acceptable to human populations. The primary challenges to biosphere reserves today are adding new sites to improve world coverage and ensuring that biosphere reserves fulfill their designated functions.