Biosphere Sanctuaries

Biosphere Sanctuaries are places where communities and individuals test interdisciplinary approaches to understand interactions between local social systems and ecosystems.   Their common feature is a core of biodiversity with a conservation management plan that provides solutions to the challenges of maintaining it in a sustainable condition.  Sanctuaries vary in size and diversity.  The biodiversity core, for example, can range from a large nature reserve, serving terrestrial, marine or coastal communities, to parks, trees in the street, gardens and a collection of potted plants giving pleasure to families and individuals. The common purpose of a biosphere sanctuary is to create a focus for people to engage in transformative learning about conservation management systems.  Therefore, biosphere sanctuaries are learning places for engaging with sustainable development.   Each sanctuary is a resource for reconciling the conservation of local biodiversity with its sustainable use.   The biosphere sanctuary is a development of UNESCO's concept of ‘Biosphere Reserves’, This idea for engaging local people in conservation emerged in 1971, when UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Council defined the overall objective of the programme to:    ‘develop the basis within the natural and social sciences for the rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere and for the improvement of the global relationship between man and the environment; to predict the consequences of today’s actions on tomorrow’s world and thereby to increase man’s ability to manage efficiently the natural resources of the biosphere’.   The objective suggests that the direct involvement of the local population in the management of Biosphere Reserves, together with the maintenance of research and monitoring activities in them, constitute the best guarantee for long-term conservation of genetic resources on a world-wide basis. The idea of biosphere sanctuaries means that every place can be declared as special and everyone can have the opportunity to engage in conservation management.   The idea of getting communities, families and individuals in local conservation management is not new.  In 1983, the First Biosphere Reserve Congress in Minsk led to an Action Plan for Biosphere Reserves, which was adopted by the MAB Council in 1984.  In 1992, an Advisory Committee on Biosphere Reserves was set up, and in 1995 a major conference in Seville gave rise to the Seville Strategy for Biosphere Reserves and a Statutory Framework for the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. In 2000, a ‘Seville+5’ review took place in Pamplona, with further refinement, through the Madrid Action Plan, for Biosphere Reserves (2008-2013).  Biosphere reserves were seen as places for local people to learn about sustainable development.  Making and operating conservation management systems are key to this process.