Today, the Minett UNESCO Biosphere, managed by the PRO-SUD Syndicate, celebrated its first anniversary at the Schungfabrik in Tétange. Among the 70 or so invited guests, Meriem Bouamrane should have been one of the guest speakers.
Meriem Bouamrane is an environmental economist, head of the Biodiversity Research and Policy Unit in the Ecology and Earth Sciences Division of the Man and the Biosphere Programme and has worked for the MAB Programme since 2001.
Furthermore, she is the coordinator of the EuroMAB network, the oldest and largest network of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. As such, she is responsible for research and training programmes on biodiversity access and use, participatory approaches and concertation, using biosphere reserves as research and demonstration sites.
In her role, she has organised and conducted several workshops using different participatory techniques and tools in biosphere reserves, and participated in several research programmes on the resilience of socio-ecological systems and participatory methodology.
In addition, Meriem Bouamrane is a member of the Scientific Committee of the PECS (Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society) sponsored by UNESCO and ICSU and hosted by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and she is the focal point for IPBES and biodiversity within UNESCO.
However, travel restrictions from UNESCO prevented Meriem Bouamrane from coming in person to celebrate the first anniversary of the Minett UNESCO Biosphere. However, the scientist did not miss the opportunity to emphasise the special nature of our biosphere reserve in a video message.
In this recording, Meriem Bouamrane also addresses the challenges of managing nature conservation, preservation and conversion in urban areas and looks ahead to the major challenges that not only the Minett UNESCO Biosphere and the other biosphere reserves of UNESCO’s Man and The Biosphere programme will have to face in the coming years and decades, but also the societal challenges associated with climate change and biodiversity loss.