Governance in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

About The Research

What are biosphere reserves?

Biosphere Reserves (BRs) are multi-use landscapes where goals of conservation are reconciled with that of socio-culturally and ecologically sustainable economic development. BRs fall under UNESCO’s Man & the Biosphere Programme (MAB) which has the specific goal of establishing a scientific basis for enhancing the relationship between people and the environment (Read more about MAB here).

Biosphere Reserves are nominated to UNESCO by national governments, and once designated, remain under the jurisdiction of the countries in which they are found. They are intended to be ‘learning sites for sustainable development’ in each country, providing local, context-specific solutions to global-scale problems. Globally there are 738 biosphere reserves in 134 countries, including 22 transboundary sites, with this number growing from year-to-year. These 738 sites belong to the ‘World Network of Biosphere Reserves’ which aims to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing across North-South, South-South and South-North-South dimensions.

With their strong focus on environmental sustainability, BR certainly resemble protected areas (they contain legally protected areas), but they are more than traditional ‘conservation-only’ areas. In addition to conservation and conservation-friendly activities, they incorporate other land uses, including human settlement and associated economic activities, inside their boundaries, spatially organised according to 3 zones: corebuffer and transition with varying levels of acceptable ‘use’. Finding ways to balance the goals of these multiple land uses and promote collaboration in support of broader landscape management is a major focus of BR research and practice. In this context our research aims to help understand how individual BRs balance and support biodiversity conservation with socio-economic development and poverty alleviation in the landscapes they are found? How can BRs help direct the landscape trajectories of ‘resource use’ towards more sustainable outcomes?

Figure: Schematic spatial zonation of a typical biosphere reserve (Original source: Figure1: Pool-Stanvliet & Coetzer 2020)

World Network of Biosphere Reserves, 2019-2020 – UNESCO Digital Library –Download pdf map here

Together with partner institutions

Governance in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

Understanding Biosphere Reserve Governance

The Man and Biosphere (MAB) programme is now in its 50th decade, and as part of its learnings as MAB has matured, is a recognition that biosphere reserve (BR) governance processes are crucial for effectively functioning BRs.

For BRs, governance refers to the structures and processes that determine how decisions about a BR are taken and how stakeholders are included. Governance involves strategic planning and leadership around setting the BRs goals, direction and accountability, with the governance model describing the chosen organisational form of the governance approach and/or strategic decision-making body.  A BR’s governance processes thus provide the strategic oversight for BRs to help BRs operate as model areas for sustainable development in the landscapes they are based. Yet a BR’s individual characteristics, operating circumstances, organisational goals and specific landscape and stakeholder contexts mean that governance is not ‘one size fits all’. This raises interesting learning and knowledge sharing opportunities across the World Network of Biosphere Reserves in how individual BRs choose to implement the goals of the MAB programme in their contexts, and how their governance decisions help them to do so.

This research is especially interested in how a BR’s chosen governance approach (both the chosen model and the processes it applies) help BRs:

(1) action the BR concept in the diverse landscapes they are located, and

(2) engage and involve local communities and other interested stakeholder for fair, open and real participation in environmental decision-making and collaborative landscape management. By documenting these elements, we hope to be able to provide valuable ‘lessons learned’ from our research site BRs for other BRs attempting to do similarly in their own social-ecological and economic development contexts.

Governance in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

Biosphere Reserves as Research Sites

This research focusses on South African BRs as research sites, with international collaborations currently in the planning phase, allowing for future cross-case study comparisons and South-South, North-South learnings with other BRs located elsewhere. This research has a strong focus on sharing with other BRs the lessons that individual BRs have learned in their implementation, and evolution through time.

The UNESCO MAB Programme was introduced to South Africa in the 1990s and a country agreement with UNESCO was signed in August 1995, with the first BR, Kogelberg BR in the Western Cape Province of South Africa listed three years later in December 1998. The most recent BR to be designated, Marico BR, was designated in 2018, located in the North-West Province. South Africa has now has 10 biosphere reserves with more planned, spatially concentrated in the south-western and north-eastern areas of the country.  Collectively they cover 115 732 km2, approximately 9.5% of the country’s total land area.

Although nominated by the National Department of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment to UNESCO for designation, the majority of South Africa’s BRs have been initiated from the bottom-up, community-driven initiatives by private land-owners and residents, local municipalities and supported by provincial government.  They are volunteer-run as Non-Profit organisations, responsible for finding the majority of their own funding and have independence in determining how exactly they are to be implemented. As a result, South African BRs largely have to find their own way to success by forming strong working relationships with a diversity of landscape actors and funders, and draw on a variety of governance approaches to do so.

Click Here to Meet the South African Biosphere Reserves

South African Biosphere Reserves

Biosphere Reserve (Province/s)Year of official DesignationTotal size (km2)
Kogelberg (Western Cape)December 19981 036.29
Cape West Coast (Western Cape)November 20003 870.00
Waterberg (Limpopo)March 20014 174.06
Kruger to Canyons (Limpopo and Mpumalanga)September 200126 080.00
Cape Winelands (Western Cape)September 20073 220.32
VhembeMay 200930 441.63
Gouritz Cluster (Western and Eastern Cape)June 201531 878.93
Magaliesberg (North West and Gauteng)June 20153 574.37
Garden Route (Western Cape and Eastern Cape)June 20176 983.63
Marico (North West)July 20184 472.69