Generic Integrated Environmental Management for Biosphere Reserves

Abstract

Biosphere reserves are protected terrestrial and coastal environments of international conservation importance. They are unique categories of protected areas combining both conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in a great variety of ecosystems, geographic conditions and socio-cultural settings. Sustainable management of a biosphere reserve should combines biological, social and financial aspects. This is a difficult challenge and implies an understanding of interactions within a complex biological and economic system combined with the successful negotiation of lasting compromises between a wide variety of stakeholders with diverse interests. Although the Seville Strategy, Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity highlights priorities for the development of biosphere reserves (including implementation indicators), a huge gap exists regarding management guidelines and appropriate standards. An Environmental Management System framework will be an appropriate tool to bridge this gap. The purpose of this study is to determine whether it is possible to apply the ISO 14001 principles to the Biosphere Reserve Concept to develop a generic Environmental Management System framework. This :framework will combine the goals and objectives of the Seville Strategy, which affirms the nature and purpose of biosphere reserves, with the objectives of the specific biosphere reserve. The goals and objectives from the Seville Strategy· were evaluated against the elements of the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, with the aid of a Leopold matrix, to determine which goals and objectives and ISO elements are most needed at national and local reserve level. Seven of the eleven objectives from the Seville Strategy are regarded as very important, three as important and one as less important on national and local reserve level. Nine of the seventeen ISO elements are regarded as very important, four as important and four as less important. The very important and important objectives from the Seville Strategy have been incorporated into the very important and important ISO elements to develop a generic Environmental Management System Framework that can serve as a guideline

document for the compilation of an environmental management system for biosphere reserves.