BiosphereSmart: sharing knowledge on climate change, green economies, and sustainable development

BiosphereSmart is a global observatory created to share ideas, knowledge, good practices, and experiences among Biosphere Reserves on issues related to climate change, green economies, and sustainable development.
The BiosphereSmart Initiative is based on the idea to maximise the use of new information technologies to build a covenant for a sustainable future and a transition to green societies based on knowledge. Citizens become both beneficiaries and key actors of the information and participation tools of the project. They can also be sensors able to provide information about their spatial experiences, improving their capacity of participation.

Biosphere Smart provides this web-based platform with the aim of: 

• Sharing ideas and best practices on issues related to sustainable development and climate change;
• Sharing experience and lessons in using biosphere reserves as green economy models;
• Promoting sustainable urban futures issues within biosphere reserves and their surroundings;
• Providing an educational tool with mapping and advanced communication services;
• Empowering sustainable communities to improve their access to information and decision-making capacity;
• Improving  information and response capacity for managers and scientific community in biosphere reserves;
• Share and facilitate access to the knowledge and expertise of the scientific community;
• Strengthen partnerships within the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR).

The BiosphereSmart Initiative was launched during the 24th Session of the International Co-ordinating Council (ICC) of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme (2012), which highlighted the "need of the MAB Programme and its networks to be a substantial tool for the implementation of the Rio+20 follow up and for this purpose on the need for the improvement of the communication by using tools like Biosphere SMART on green economies and by using biosphere reserves as study sites for all UNESCO Programmes".

⇒ BiosphereSmart Initiative website