The Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) of UNESCO was established in 1971 to promote interdisciplinary approaches to management, research and education in ecosystem conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

Development[link]

Map showing the World Network of Biosphere Reserves as of 2009. Note: transboundary sites have been redistributed among the concerned countries for the locator map, hence, have been counted multiple times

The MAB programme’s primary achievement is the creation in 1977 of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. This World Network is more than a listing -- biosphere reserves exchange knowledge and experiences on sustainable development innovations across national and continental borders -- they exist in more than 100 countries all across the world. Biosphere reserves are areas that are supposed to develop innovative approaches, test them and share the results; more importantly to combine many different approaches in a vast diversity of policy and management fields, towards a balanced relationship between mankind and nature.

In order for an area to be included in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, work on the ground has to have started, appropriate information about the region gathered, and the local population needs to have agreed. Nominations then are prepared and submitted to UNESCO by national governments, in most cases through MAB national committees. Benefits gained from being part of the network include access to a shared base of knowledge and incentives to integrate conservation, development and scientific research on sustainably manage ecosystems.

Owing to the MAB programme’s focus to improving mankind's relationship with nature, MAB has gradually been seen as UNESCO’s, and as one of the United Nations’s most important responses to international dialogues such as the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Ahead of the 1990s, the MAB programme was a research programme organized along 14 large research projects addressing ecosystems such as mountain areas, arid lands, etc.

During the initial years of the MAB programme, the designation of biosphere reserves focused on research questions and on environmental conservation. Hence, there are several national parks among the areas included in the network - these mostly encompass isolated wilderness with outstanding biodiversity values. In the early 1990s, the MAB programme’s focus shifted to promoting interactions of mankind with nature in terms of sustainable living, income generation and reducing poverty. In biosphere reserves, nature is not isolated from man, but it is conserved through using it. Hence, they are places where livelihood is sustained - even urban greenbelts can be found among the biosphere reserves.

In 1995, the second World Congress of Biosphere Reserves held in Seville formally defined and designated a set of objectives and procedures governing the recognition of potential biosphere reserves based on this strategic thrust (Seville Strategy and the International Guidelines). Criteria have been set to ensure that the objectives of the programme will be met. A regular evaluation of biosphere reserves is obligatory. Therefore, many biosphere reserves which had been included during the 1970s and 1980s have in the meantime either been withdrawn from the World Network or redefined so as to remain relevant to this new setting. All relevant decisions in the MAB Programme are taken by an intergovernmental committee, the MAB International Co-ordinating Council (ICC): The 38 members of the ICC are government representatives which are elected for a four-year term by the UNESCO General Conference. The Secretariat of the MAB Programme is located with UNESCO Headquarters Paris.

To date, 580 biosphere reserves in 114 countries have been included in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Searchable list of UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves
• Frequently Asked Questions on Biosphere Reserve
• A-Z of Areas of Biodiverity Importance: Biosphere Reserves (MAB)

Vladimir Vernadsky
Born	Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky 12 March 1863 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died	6 January 1945 (age 81) Moscow, Soviet Union
Residence	Russian Empire Soviet Union
Nationality	Ukrainian
Fields	Geology, crystallography, mineralogy, geochemistry, nuclear geology, biology, biogeochemistry, philosophy
Institutions	Moscow State University National Academy of Science of Ukraine
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg State University
Known for	Noosphere biogeochemistry

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (Russian: Влади́мир Ива́нович Верна́дский, Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Вернадський; 12 March [O.S. 28 February] 1863 – 6 January 1945) was a Russian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology.^[1] His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in Ukraine, where he founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (now National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess’ 1885 term biosphere, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Biography[link]

Vernadsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on 12 March 1863, of mixed Russian and Ukrainian parents. His father, a descendent of Ukrainian Cossacks,^[2] had been a professor of political economy in Kiev before moving to Saint Petersburg, and his mother was a noblewoman of Russian ethnicity^[3] (Vernadsky considered himself both Russian and Ukrainian, and had some knowledge of the Ukrainian language.)^[4]

Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1885. As the last mineralogist had died in 1887 in Russia, and Vasily Dokuchaev, a soil scientist, and Alexey Pavlov, a geologist, had been teaching Mineralogy for a while, Vernadsky chose to enter Mineralogy. He wrote to his wife Natasha on 20 June 1888 from Switzerland:

...to collect facts for their own sake, as many now gather facts, without a program, without a question to answer or a purpose is not interesting. However, there is a task which someday those chemical reactions which took place at various points on earth; these reactions take place according to laws which are known to us, but which, we are allowed to think, are closely tied to general changes which the earth has undergone by the earth with the general laws of celestial mechanics. I believe there is hidden here still more to discover when one considers the complexity of chemical elements and the regularity of their occurrence in groups...

While trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to Naples to study with crystallographer Arcangelo Scacchi, who was senile by that time. Scacchi's condition led Vernadsky to go to Germany to study under Paul Groth. Vernadsky learned how to use the modern equipment of Groth who had developed a machine to study the optical, thermal, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of crystals. He also gained access to the physics lab of Leonhard Sohncke (Direcktor, Physikalischen Institut der Universität Jena, 1883–1886; Professor der Physik an der Technischen Hochschule München 1886 -1897), who was studying crystallisation during that period.

Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized by today's scientific community. The word 'biosphere' was invented by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, whom Vernadsky met in 1911.

In Vernadsky's theory of the Earth's development, the noosphere is the third stage in the earth's development, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transformed the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of both life and cognition are essential features of the Earth's evolution, and must have been implicit in the earth all along. This systemic and geological analysis of living systems complements Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection,^{[citation needed]} which looks at each individual species, rather than at its relationship to a subsuming principle.

Vernadsky's visionary pronouncements were not widely accepted in the West. However, he was one of the first scientists to recognize that the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere result from biological processes. During the 1920s he published works arguing that living organisms could reshape the planets as surely as any physical force. Vernadsky was an important pioneer of the scientific bases for the environmental sciences.^[5]

Vernadsky was a member of the Russian and Soviet Academies of Sciences since 1912 and was a founder and first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, Ukraine (1918). He was a founder of the National Library of Ukrainian State and worked closely with the Tavrida University in Crimea. During the Russian Civil War, he hosted gatherings of the young intellectuals who later founded the émigré Eurasianism movement.^[6] He was opposed to Ukrainian independence.^[4]

In the late 1930s and early 1940s Vernadsky played an early advisory role in the Soviet atomic bomb project, as one of the most forceful voices arguing for the exploitation of nuclear power, the surveying of Soviet uranium sources, and having nuclear fission research conducted at his Radium Institute. He died, however, before a full project was pursued.

Vernadsky's son George Vernadsky (1887–1973) emigrated to the United States where he published numerous books on medieval Russian history, medieval Ukrainian history, and modern Russian history.

A main street in Moscow, and the Tavrida National University in Crimea, are named in honor of Vladimir Vernadsky.

Works (selected)[link]

• Geochemistry, published in Russian 1924
• The Biosphere, first published in Russian in 1926. English translations:
  • Oracle, AZ, Synergetic Press, 1986, ISBN 0-907791-11-5, 86 pp.
  • tr. David B. Langmuir, ed. Mark A. S. McMenamin, New York, Copernicus, 1998, ISBN 0-387-98268-X, 192 pp.
• Essays on Geochemistry & the Biosphere, tr. Olga Barash, Santa Fe, NM, Synergetic Press, ISBN 0-907791-36-0, 2006

Diaries[link]

• Dnevniki 1917-1921: oktyabr 1917-yanvar 1920 (Diaries 1917-1921), Kiev, Naukova dumka, 1994, ISBN 5-12-004641-X, 269 pp.
• Dnevniki. Mart 1921-avgust 1925 (Diaries 1921-1925), Moscow, Nauka, 1998, ISBN 5-02-004422-9, 213 pp.
• Dnevniki 1926-1934 (Diaries 1926-1934), Moscow, Nauka, 2001, ISBN 5-02-004409-1, 455 pp.
• Dnevniki 1935-1941 v dvukh knigakh. Kniga 1, 1935-1938 (Diaries 1935-1941 in two volumes. Volume 1, 1935-1938), Moscow, Nauka, 2006,ISBN 5-02-033831-1,444 pp.
• Dnevniki 1935-1941 v dvukh knigakh. Kniga 2, 1939-1941 (Diaries 1935-1941. Volume 2, 1939-1941), Moscow, Nauka, 2006, ISBN 5-02-033832-X, 295 pp.

See also[link]

• Gaia theory (science)
• Noosphere
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
• Russian philosophy

References[link]

• "Science and Russian Cultures in an Age of Revolutions" ISBN 0-253-31123-3
• Lapo, Andrei V. (March 2001). "Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863-1945), founder of the biosphere concept". Int. Microbiol. 4 (1): pp. 47–9. DOI:10.1007/s101230100008. PMID 11770820. http://www.im.microbios.org/13march01/09%20Lapo%20(P).pdf. 

External links[link]

• The grave of Vernadsky
• Behrends, Thilo, The Renaissance of V.I. Vernadsky, Newsletter of the Geochemical Society, #125, October 2005, http://www.geochemsoc.org/downloads/gn125.pdf retrieved Aug. 22, 2010
• Vernadsky, Vladimir Ivanovich, GEOCHEMISTRY AND THE BIOSPHERE. http://www.synergeticpress.com/vernadsky.html
• Electronic archive of writings from and about Vernadsky (Russian) http://vernadsky.lib.ru/