UNESCO biosphere reserves and agroecological initiatives: what convergence for what sustainable development? The case of the 'Arganeraie' biosphere reserve in Morocco

Abstract

UNESCO's Biosphere Reserves are territories committed to harmonizing biodiversity conservation, anthropogenic resource usage, and stakeholder involvement within a unified project aimed at achieving sustainable development. In this vein, certain actors undertake agro-ecological activities in the Argan Biosphere Reserve in Morocco, which brings up questions regarding the nature of the relationship between this BR and these initiatives. How do these initiatives contribute to the sustainable development advocated by the reserve? How is the UNESCO recognition leveraged by the actors of these initiatives? To answer these questions, a territorial approach was implemented through a content analysis, entailing a detailed study of the text corpus structure derived from our interview discourse conducted during visits to agro-ecological initiatives carried out under the European project Erasmus+ Edu BioMed titled: "Skills Development for Education and Applied Research in UNESCO's Mediterranean Biosphere Reserves" (EduBioMed). The analyses performed on the corpus include word clouds, principal component analysis, and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). This study shows that the agro-ecological initiatives adhere to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve the initiatives, but do not align with the territorial system of the BR and the sustainable development advocated by it. The actors involved in these initiatives perceive the BR recognition as pertaining to the tangible and intangible heritage associated with the Argan tree. Lastly, there has not yet been regional co-construction between the initiative promoters and local actors to reconcile the sustainable use of resources and conservation of the BR ecosystem.