Biosphere reserves and protected areas: A liaison dangereuse or a mutually beneficial relationship>

Abstract

“BR are much more than just protected areas” was remarked in 1995, on the occasion of the Seville Conference, a milestone in the history of the Man and Biosphere (MaB) Programme of UNESCO. Being inspired by this ultimate remark, the authors of the paper decided to analyse the evolution of the relationship between the Biosphere Reserves (BRs) and the Protected Areas (PAs), in terms of conceptual and operational approaches developed by both the respective scientific and practitioners’ communities. From being initially identified as sub-portions of pre-existing protected areas-as observed in the early designations dating back to the 1970s and 1980s of the last century - BRs have become larger, in terms of their total extensions, and multifunctional, in terms of their zoning drivers, including the PAs as only one portion of the entire designated territories. Paradoxically, the MaB Programme has never explicitly considered the “landscape” as a specific BR attribute (or nomination criteria), on the contrary to what has happened at UNESCO within the World Heritage Convention, where the concept of cultural landscape has become an official category of designated sites since 1992. The analysis concludes by observing how the relationship between BR and PAs may be easily transformed into a liaison dangereuse when a clear distinction of the respective primary functions and their territorial implications (the zoning) has not been applied. The two governance regimes can be easily confused with each other with clear difficulties of engineering appropriate management measures and risks of reducing their effectiveness.