Transboundary Biosphere Reserves - Naturpark Pfälzerwald

Presentations of the six officially recognized TBRs
Future challenges
Despite the above described success stories and
examples of good practice, ‘Pfälzerwald/Vosges du
Nord’ TBR will have to face a number of evolving
crucial issues in the near future, problems and
threats that will show if the transboundary
cooperation is really sustainable in the strict sense of
the term. The main challenges are:
● Lack of interest and fashion-oriented
attitudes of some decision-makers and
stakeholders:
A number of locally and regionally important
people are focussing on short-term revenues
and non-sustainable economic activities,
negatively impacting on the natural
environment. Quite often their
understanding and perception of
‘development’ is limited to the conversion of
natural ecosystems. This goes along with
increasing fragmentation and loss of habitats.
At the same time they complain about the
demographic change taking place especially
in the western part of the TBR. They fear a
decline in population growth without
recognizing new opportunities and
alternative scenarios. It will be a major task in
future to draw their attention away from
sheer quantitative aspects of development
and more towards the various facets of what
‘quality of life’ can mean and be.
● Inappropriate UNESCO MAB framework
for TBRs:
‘Pfälzerwald/Vosges du Nord’ TBR was
officially recognized by UNESCO in 1998.
Consequently, a joint periodic review will
have to be carried out in 2008. So far,
neither the MAB secretariat nor the national
MAB committees of Germany and France
have started to develop a procedure and
well-defined criteria for such a joint
evaluation of the TBR.
Since 2004 everyone announces the joint
periodic review in 2008 but unfortunately no
one knows how to do it or even starts to
initiate the process of getting there. Still,
some representatives of the two national
MAB committees talk about ‘Vosges du
Nord’ Biosphere Reserve or ‘Pfälzerwald’
Biosphere Reserve and their acting clearly
reflects the very limited perception of the
reality, that since 1998, those two biosphere
reserves do not exist anymore.
Furthermore, it has to be noted that bottomup
initiatives relating to the elaboration of
review-procedures and -criteria, coming
from TBR-practitioners, are not always very
welcome and sometimes even ignored.
Consequently, traditional mind-sets will have
to be altered, even on higher levels of
national and international MAB decisionmaking,
in order to proceed and to
implement the ad hoc Task Force’s
recommendations for TBRs at the ‘Seville + 5
International Meeting of Experts’, in 2000, in
Pamplona.
● Uncoordinated and unmanaged tourism
and visitor development:
As nowadays in many minds ‘nature’ does
not have a value in itself, and, without being
‘developed’ or being ‘put into value’ by man,
does not have the right to exist, even the
core areas of the TBR are coming under
increasing threat and negative impact now.
Neither the fast growing market of tourism
industries nor the various operators of
‘adventure tourism’ and ‘wilderness
trekking’, nor the representatives of other,
new-fashioned, so-called ‘outdoor-activities’
see the necessity to respect at least 1,8 % of
the total TBR area to be preserved as core
areas, with only very little human impact and
with climax or emerging ecosystems, where
natural processes predominate and not man.
What is clearly missing to face the increasing
anthropogenic pressure on some of the most
important and fragile centres of biodiversity
conservation, are feasible and wellcoordinated
transboundary concepts for
visitor management and environmental
education-oriented ranger services, for
instance, built on the guidelines and findings
of EUROPARC’s ‘European Charter for
Sustainable Tourism’ and being implemented
in an ambience of consensus between the
relevant key-players on both sides of and
across the border.
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