Biosphere Reserves Institute
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From 4th to 7th November 2025, 34 participants from 19 European countries gathered at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development in Germany to explore collaboration in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs). Hosted by the Biosphere Reserves Institute (BRI) and supported by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN), the workshop aimed to advance the Lima Action Plan/Hangzhou Strategic Action Plan and the Eberswalde Declaration. It did so by exploring how collaboration takes place in BRs, identifying which projects and actors are active, assessing current collaboration challenges and opportunities, and outlining how collaboration can be further supported and enhanced.
The workshop programme included presentations, panel discussions, group work, participatory collaboration mapping and opportunities for informal exchange. Specific themes addressed included: transdisciplinary research, MAB regional and thematic networks and governance.
It was noted that collaboration is essential for fulfilling the three MAB functions (conservation, development and logistic support), furthering international and national policy requests, serving peace-building, establishing new BRs, conducting research co-design/transdisciplinary research and solving conflicts. Collaboration takes place across different BRs, on different scales and includes a diverse range of actors. MAB National Committees, as well as regional and thematic networks, have emerged as privileged places for collaboration. Collaboration in the BRs takes place in many forms. Some important practices for collaboration across different contexts include: the creation of spaces for people to come together, focusing on already established good working relations, supporting and engaging youth, cross-country learning, inclusiveness, having a friendly and good-listener attitude and recognising that collaboration requires trust and takes time to develop.
Identified challenges included BRs being affected by war, language barriers and differences in legal backgrounds for cross-border BRs, fragmentation in policy and legislative frameworks, lack of staff to coordinate and realise ideas suggested by actors, time constraints among potential partners and the risk of overburdening them, limited financial resources, bureaucracy, little local understanding of what constitutes a BR, fear of restrictions and a lack of communication between local and state governments.
Concrete results of this workshop included a newly formed working group with the aim of establishing an informal MAB network on forests and tangible new partnerships for project development. Furthermore, an ongoing table with existing and potential collaborations was created to facilitate mutual learning, encourage new collaborations and support each other. Good collaboration practices shared in this workshop were summarised into a graphic record for widespread communication and learning. Overall, the workshop established that collaboration plays a huge role for BRs and can be improved through both structural changes and personal attitudes and priority settings.
From 3rd to 7th February 2025, 33 participants from 17 European countries gathered on the Isle of Vilm, Germany, to explore the potential of citizen science (CS) in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs). Hosted by the Biosphere Reserves Institute (BRI) and funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the workshop aimed to advance the Lima Action Plan and the Eberswalde Declaration by exploring how CS in BRs can increase collaboration with local communities, support environmental education, advance data collection and analysis and strengthen research.
The workshop programme included presentations, discussion rounds, group work and opportunities for informal exchange. While some presentations focused on conceptualising CS, most shared and reflected on practical experiences with it in BRs. It was noted that CS encompasses a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from citizens using apps to collect data (e.g., on birds) to research projects initiated and conducted by non-(academic) scientists.
Participants shared a strong belief in the power of CS to generate data, engage communities and inspire action. Furthermore, some presentations revealed an intrinsic motivation among local communities to be involved in CS. In terms of education, it was revealed that CS can foster a sense of locality and place attachment, as well as trigger community action through experiential learning. Many speakers emphasised collaboration on both local and global scales as essential for ensuring effective CS, emphasising the value of existing networks, early engagement and transdisciplinary partnerships.
Identified challenges included difficulties in recruiting and retaining skilled participants, ensuring data quality and long-term data governance and the lack of (long-term) funding. The case studies revealed that the co-creation of knowledge through CS requires spaces of respectful communication, which often means that scientists need to leave their disciplines to acknowledge different knowledge domains and framings of issues. Participants also called for more meaningful collaboration with schools, policymakers and local groups, while the need for user-friendly tools, training, expert validation and inclusive communication was repeatedly stressed. Furthermore, it was revealed that evaluation criteria specifically designed to assess CS projects and their impacts are still lacking. Additionally, participants called for increased promotion of CS by UNESCO.
Solutions proposed included the better identification of local research needs, the continuous reflection of the research process and evaluating to what extent different expectations have been met. Participants emphasised the need for better platforms to exchange knowledge and good practices across BRs, and special attention was given to providing opportunities for youth to be part of CS in BRs, which would contribute not only to the production of knowledge, but also nurture the emotional connection to nature and create opportunities for lifelong learning. Many participants highlighted the need for BR-specific research guidelines, and these were further developed during the workshop, with a focus on the synergies between research and CS. Importantly, as a result of this workshop, the German Commission for UNESCO decided to add CS as a criterion for the designation and evaluation of German BRs.
Overall, the workshop showed that CS holds great potential for BRs to bridge science and society and to foster inclusive, participatory sustainable development.
The international workshop “Research in European UNESCO Biosphere Reserves” took place from 13th to 16th February 2024 at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Eberswalde, Germany. This event was part of a series of workshops funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation that aim to connect European biosphere reserve practitioners and facilitate the exchange of knowledge and good practices. The workshop brought together a total of 28 participants from 15 European countries, including managers and researchers, and it built on the Eberswalde Declaration and the Lima Action Plan to advance research in biosphere reserves. Specific themes addressed in the workshop included: current research progress, research gaps and needs, monitoring and research data accessibility/management and research collaborations.
The workshop emphasised the critical intersection of scientific research, policymaking and the practical realities of managing biosphere reserves, highlighting both the achievements and ongoing challenges faced by biosphere reserve practitioners and researchers in Europe while offering opportunities to exchange and connect, as well as an outlook for future action and collaboration. Biosphere reserves serve as invaluable landscapes for learning and research, and they contribute significantly towards improving the effectiveness of management measures. Workshop discussions highlighted the diversity of research projects conducted across a broad spectrum of topics, involving numerous institutions and stakeholders. However, a noticeable gap exists between scientific and academic requirements, policy and funding cycles and the on-the-ground realities of biosphere reserve management, which often hinders progress due to a lack of collaboration and communication between managers, practitioners and researchers, thereby negatively affecting effective management and governance. A recurring theme is the lack of visibility of biosphere reserves, as they frequently overlap with other protected area categories that have higher visibility among the population and policymakers alike. Some possible solutions suggested in the workshop included raising awareness among funders about the value of biosphere reserves and their contribution to broader policy objectives, enhancing experience and result-sharing across the network, establishing and sharing databases to connect researchers with practitioners, co-designing projects to foster collaboration among a diverse range of stakeholders and the better integration of research results into management practices.
Islands have unique vulnerabilities to biodiversity loss and climate change. Current Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement are insufficient to avoid the irreversible loss of critical island ecosystems. Existing research, policies, and finance also do not sufficiently address small islands’ social-environmental challenges. For instance, the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) mentions islands in the invasive species management target. This focus is important, as islands are at high risk to biological invasions; however, this is the only GBF target that mentions islands. There are threats of equal or greater urgency to small islands, including coastal hazards and overexploitation. Ecosystems such as coral reefs and mangroves are crucial for biodiversity, coastal protection, and human livelihoods, yet are unaddressed in the GBF. While research and global policy, including targeted financial flows, have a strong focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the situation of other small islands has been largely overlooked. Here, through a review of policy developments and examples from islands in the Philippines and Chile, we urge that conservation and climate change policies place greater emphasis on acknowledging the diversity of small islands and their unique governance challenges, extending the focus beyond SIDS. Moving forward, global policy and research should include the recognition of small islands as metacommunities linked by interacting species and social-ecological systems to emphasize their connectivity rather than their isolation. Coalition-building and knowledge-sharing, particularly with local, Indigenous and traditional knowledge-holders from small islands, is needed to meet global goals on biodiversity and sustainable development by 2030.
Since the 1990s, Mongolia's capital city Ulaanbaatar has recorded steady and rapid population growth due to rural-urban migration. So far, little is known about how the social and ecological conditions of migration interact. Thus, in our study we investigated the rural-urban migration process from the countryside to the capital in the Eastern Steppe conducting semi-structured interviews. Our results show that this rural-urban migration often follows a stepwise process from smaller settlements to larger urban agglomerations. The results also demonstrate a complex interplay between the prevailing social, economic, and ecological factors. While social factors (kinship, education) show the same relevance at each step of migration, ecological factors such as the occurrence of dzud seem more relevant at the early stages, from the steppe to the sum centres. Ecological factors only seem to rank second in importance, after social reasons. Economic reasons are also revealed to be very significant but seem most relevant the closer the migrations are to the capital. These results are essential in order to cope with current and future challenges of population development and find solutions to enable traditional Mongolian nomadism even under a modern lifestyle.
Der Klimawandel wirkt auf die wenigen noch wachsenden Moore ein, so dass die Frage besteht, inwieweit die Resilienz dieser autochthonen Ökosysteme in all ihrer Vielfalt gestützt werden kann. Zur Beantwortung werden Dauerbeobachtungsreihen von weitgehend ungestörten Mooren aus dem Biosphärenreservat Schorfheide-Chorin (Brandenburg) ausgewertet. Diese werden mit den Ergebnissen einer Erfolgskontrolle wiedervernässter Waldmoore in Kontext gesetzt. Zur Einschätzung der Moorzustände wird ein neu entwickeltes Indikatorensystem zur Bewertung moorspezifischer Biodiversität angewendet. Es wird zudem eine Abschätzung der Treibhausgasemissionen nach der Treibhaus-Gas-Emissions-Standort-Typen(GEST)-Methodik vorgenommen und die potenzielle Torfneubildung betrachtet. Die Analysen zeigen, dass das Puffervermögen wachsender Moore im Untersuchungsraum noch intakt ist und Störungen ohne Systemwechsel überwunden werden. Die Vernässungsmaßnahmen waren durchweg erfolgreich und haben zu einer messbaren Revitalisierung geführt. Es wird auf die dringende Notwendigkeit hingewiesen, heute alle noch weitestgehend naturnahen Moore in ihrem Wasserhaushalt bestmöglich zu stabilisieren, um sie als wichtige Glieder der autochthonen Biodiversität mit allen ihren positiven Landschaftsfunktionen zu erhalten.
Sustainability innovations influence societal transformations through the development of new products, processes, organizations, behaviors or values. Although various research approaches have tackled technological innovations in the last few decades, the specificities and enabling conditions of individual sustainability innovations remain rather unknown. We therefore propose an analytical framework, built on learning from the social–ecological systems and transitions literature. The sustainability innovation framework features four dimensions: context, actors, process and outcomes, which are detailed in 31 variables. We use the sustainability innovation framework to analyze two case studies selected in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve, Germany. The first refers to technological and organizational innovation in mobility, while the second relates to social and organizational innovation in agriculture. As a result, we highlight commonalities and differences in enabling conditions and variables between the two cases, which underpin the influence of trust, commitment, resource availability, experimenting, learning, advocating, and cooperating for innovation development. The cases further demonstrate that sustainability innovations develop as bundles of interdependent, entangled novelties, due to their disruptive character. Their specificity thereby resides in positive outcomes in terms of social–ecological integrity and equity. This study therefore contributes to transitions studies via a detailed characterization of sustainability innovations and of their outcomes, as well as through a generic synthesis of variables into an analytical framework that is applicable to a large and diverse range of individual sustainability innovations. Further empirical studies should test these findings in other contexts, to pinpoint generic innovation development patterns and to develop a typology of sustainability innovation archetypes.
The aim of the presented project was to develop a practicable system for measuring sustainability of national tourism in Germany. Initially, 18 sustainability criteria for tourism were identified. In a second step, these criteria were analyzed with regard to their measurability using indicators in a coherent accounting system in compliance with international recommendations. The outcome is a Tourism Sustainability Satellite Account (TSSA), a system of
indicators which is mainly based on statistical frameworks of national accounts and environmental-economic accounts. In addition, social indicators have been added that mainly measure decent job creation in tourism. Thus, the TSSA allows a systematic allocation of the
economic, ecological and social impacts of tourism to the tourism-relevant economic sectors at a national level. However, there is still a need for development of some sustainability indicators,
especially from the management and, to some extent, the ecological sector.
As a test, the TSSA indicators have been filled with currently available data. The results show that tourism in Germany contributes significantly to creating added value and jobs, although labor productivity is low. In terms of ecological impacts, climate impacts with a slightly above-average greenhouse gas intensity compared to the economy as a whole are at the top of the list, although this intensity varies significantly within the tourism sub-sectors. Working conditions are generally considered to be less sustainable than in other industries. Only the pay gap between men and women is significantly smaller than in other sectors of the economy.