Exploring the Potential and Contribution of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves for Landscape Governance and Management in Africa

Abstract

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Biosphere Reserves strive for a harmonious interaction between humans and nature. As landscapes provide suitable units to mutually address matters of conservation and sustainable development, this study aims to explore the potential and realized contribution of biosphere reserves for landscape governance and management. We emphasize the role of stakeholder participation and cooperation as an overarching condition for integrated landscape approaches. The regional focus is on Africa, where multiple drivers of global and local change currently significantly impact the landscape. The study’s results are based on a literature review, which is complemented by four case studies from the biosphere reserves in Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, and Benin/Togo. Findings show that in biosphere reserves, stakeholder engagement is crucial to gain community acceptance, foster intersectoral cooperation, and provide management with more legitimacy. To strengthen stakeholders’ capacities to mutually achieve conservation and development outcomes, international partnerships and research and education efforts proved to be successful. The flexible biosphere reserve approach to governance, which allows for integration with other land-management approaches, offers a suitable governance model for a landscape. Moreover, the biosphere reserve zonation concept can provide orientation to manage the “multifunctionality” of a landscape and address the associated trade-offs between different stakeholders’ aspirations.

Editorial for Special Issue: “Collaboration and Multi-Stakeholder Engagement in Landscape Governance and Management in Africa: Lessons from Practice”

“…The paper found that, due to the disputed nature of informal settlements, local residents are more predisposed to interact with researchers than government agents. In co-identifying and designing solutions, the neutral role of the researchers enhances trust and supports the leveraging of efforts across sectors (Hedden-Dunkhorst and Schmitt [10], Kusters et al [6]).…”

“…BE TRANSPARENT AND OPEN: Given the diversity of interests and values of landscape actors, transparency and openness should be encouraged in all stakeholder interactions, and across all decision-making processes and land governance structures. Hedden-Dunkhorst and Schmitt [10] show the importance of transparency to promote realistic expectations on livelihood improvements in biosphere reserve management. Transparency helps build trust among stakeholders and makes them comfortable about the values they hold.…”

“…This is evidenced by Favretto et al [1], whereby meaningful and long-term engagement of practitioners and communities has allowed the pursuit of locally relevant approaches as a stepping stone to build trust and enhance the capacity of forestry projects to address complex climatedevelopment challenges. Similarly, Hedden-Dunkhorst and Schmitt [10] demonstrate that ensuring open participation opportunities and transparent governance structures are vital to create trust between a biosphere reserve and its user groups. Building the capacity and social capital of the less powerful actors is necessary to ensure they can organise themselves, access relevant information, learn about their rights and develop negotiation skills (Cockburn et al [3]).…”

Revisión de los objetivos de los espacios protegidos: el parque natural y reserva de la biosfera de Redes

“…ˆIntegrar las necesidades y opiniones de las comunidades locales dentro del grupo de agentes involucrados en el diseño de las estrategias. De hecho, está demostrado que la consecución de objetivos de conservación es más probable cuando se fomentan los beneficios socioeconómicos a través de la sostenibilidad cultural y la integración de las comunidades locales (Oldekop et al 2016;Hedden-Dunkhorst & Schmitt, 2020).…”

Comparative Analysis between the Role of Local Communities in Regional Development inside Japanese and Russian UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves: Case Studies of Mount Hakusan and Katunskiy Biosphere Reserves

“…The details of the interviewers are shown in the Table 4. Interview questions were developed through the participatory observation of local communities and a literature review [51]. To test the questions, we conducted semistructured interviews with two experts from MHBR (summer 2018) and one expert from KatBR (spring 2018).…”