Rural innovations in biosphere reserves – A social network approach

Abstract

Today, peripheral rural areas are indispensable to achieve global and national conservation goals or a post-carbon transition while simultaneously struggling for quality of life and economic development. Biosphere Reserves have the ambition to overcome this dichotomy of environmental protection and regional development by fostering and upscaling (social) innovations within their World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). This study explores how these innovations resp. innovative firms and projects are stimulated and embedded in practice. A standardized survey and social network analysis (SNA) with these firms in two Biosphere Reserves reveals that innovations in the peripheral regions are multi-level arrangements where the Biosphere Reserves (1) provide platforms for new ideas and needs, (2) foster the development, funding and diffusion of products or services and (3) act as gatekeepers between actors of different areas and spatial scales. We therefore conclude that the role of the Biosphere Reserve in the two regions goes far beyond the protection of nature, providing the ‘institutional thickness’ for successful regional development. Additionally, they are social innovations themselves, which support the co-production of knowledge and learning. However, if UNESCO's Man and Biosphere program truly wants to have an impact on sustainability transitions, the integration of local actors and their projects into their WNBR has to be their top priority for the future.