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

Bettina Hedden-Dunkhorst and Florian Schmitt
Additional contact information
Bettina Hedden-Dunkhorst: Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Konstantinstr. 110, 53179 Bonn, Germany
Florian Schmitt: German Commission for UNESCO, Martin-Luther-Allee 42, 53175 Bonn, Germany

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-27

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.

Keywords: landscapes; biosphere reserves; stakeholder participation; conservation; sustainable development; governance; management; communication; capacity building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/8/237/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/8/237/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:8:p:237-:d:387777

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().