Biosphere Reserves In The Arab Region

Environmental Law in Arab States offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of the guiding principles and rules relating to environmental protection in the Arab region. Taking an international and comparative approach, the book introduces readers to the latest developments of environmental law across the Arab region through applicable legislation, green finance, and climate technologies The impact of these is assessed in each of the major areas of environmental regulation, air pollution, water pollution, biodiversity, conservation of nature and cultural heritage, infrastructure development, and Islamic ecology. Consideration is given to participatory and bottom-up legal strategies DS focusing on transparency, accountability, gender justice, and other human rights safeguards DS that are needed to achieve greater coherence and coordination in the implementation and enforcement of environmental regulation across the region. The book closes by providing legal assessments and reflections on how Arab countries can, through clear and comprehensive legislation, advance existing national strategies and visions on trade and investment, green growth, Islamic green finance, circular economy, blue economy, and low carbon future amongst others.

UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs) are designated areas in geographical regions of global socio-ecological significance. This definitive book shows their global relevance and contribution to environmental protection, biocultural diversity and education. Initiated in the 1970s as part of UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere (MAB) Programme, BRs share a set of common objectives, to support and demonstrate a balance between biodiversity conservation, sustainable development and research. The world’s 701 BRs form an international, intergovernmental network to support the aims of sustainability science, but this purpose has not always been widely understood. In three distinct sections, the book starts by outlining the origins of BRs and the MAB Programme, showing how they contribute to advancing sustainable development. The second section documents the evolution of BRs around the world, including case studies from each of the five UNESCO world regions. Each case study demonstrates how conservation, sustainable development and the role of scientific research have been interpreted locally. The book concludes by discussing thematic lessons to help understand the challenges and opportunities associated with sustainability science, providing a unique platform from which lessons can be learned. This includes how concepts become actions on the ground and how ideas can be taken up across sites at differing scales. This book will be of great interest to professionals engaged in conservation and sustainable development, NGOs, policy-makers and advanced students in environmental management, ecology, sustainability science, environmental anthropology and geography.

Since 1971, UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme has embraced a number of principles that link the political, scientific and academic spheres. Biosphere Reserves and Sustainable Development Goals 1 presents these areas as privileged spaces for experimenting with operating methods specific to cross-cutting objectives and issues. These areas encourage the development of interdisciplinary research, supported by a worldwide network to disseminate experience, approaches and knowhow. The various global and local political scales are linked here, with different consequences for the reconfiguration of local political arenas, for specific modes of development linked to a renewed relationship with knowledge, powers and institutions, and for renewed relationships between the worlds of science, education and territorial governance.

The Seville Strategy spurred a signifi cant paradigm shift in UNESCO's MAB Programme, re-conceptualising the research programme as a modern tool for the dual mandate of nature conservation and sustainable development. However, many biosphere reserves failed to comply with the new regulations and in 2013 the 'Exit Strategy' was announced to improve the quality of the global network. This study presents a global assessment of the implementation of the quality enhancement strategies, highlighting signifi cant differences worldwide through 20 country-specifi c case studies. It concludes that the strategies have been fundamental in improving the credibility and coherence of the MAB Programme. Challenges in the implementation were not unique to individual countries but were common to all Member States with pre-Seville sites, and in many states the process has led to a rejuvenation of national biosphere reserve networks.

The biosphere reserve concept was first launched in the mid-1970's, as part of UNESCO's international programme 'Man and the biosphere' (MAB), and has now become a practical field approach to combining the conservation of biological diversity with sustainable development needs. This publication has been prepared to mark the 30th anniversary of the MAB Programme. It provides an overview of the origins and development of the concept and its implementation, and goes on to consider recent activities and publications. It also discusses the difficulties and challenges in implementing the concept in different social, cultural, economic and biogeographic contexts.