Diseño Estudio de caso

According to its bilingual website19_{, the Vietnam MAB National Committee serves as “a}

coordinating agency for national and international exchange amongst biosphere reserves and sister-systems of nature reserves, including research results, management methods or experiences in revolving specific issues.” The Committee is formally organized under the Natural Sciences Sub-Committee of the Vietnam National

19 _{The Vietnam MAB National Committee’s bilingual website was formerly hosted at}

http://mabvietnam.net/. As of 2016, this website is no longer operational. An extensive Vietnamese- language website is available at http://mabvietnam.com/.

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Commission for UNESCO (itself organized under the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs), with a secretariat based at CERE at the Hanoi University of Education. This somewhat complex organization has distinct advantages, simultaneously linking the MAB Committee to Vietnam’s very active national UNESCO community (through the National Commission) and to the environmental research community (through its base at the Hanoi University of Education). This dual structure helps ensure the active linkage of two significant areas of activity - site-focused academic research and the maintenance of international commitments - under the international MAB programme. The linkage allows the MAB member state to draw upon two spheres of resources and inputs towards its engagement with the programme, thereby enhancing its potential to derive benefits from and ensure sustainability.

In an extensive interview held in February 2011, the Secretary-General discussed the development and nature of MAB in Vietrnam. With specific reference to the leadership of the programme at the national level, the Secretary-General summarized the principal duties of his office as “implementing the national policy on MAB by combining

protected area management with local development”, and in this way play a supporting role for the country’s biosphere reserves, enabling them to benefit from the

programme’s international and national spheres. While each of Vietnam’s biosphere reserves is managed under the responsibility of the provincial authorities, it is the duty of the MAB National Committee to mobilize activities and support for the network. The Secretary-General noted that these duties as include the delivery of technical support for the reserves through the provision of a national network of experts able to organize occasional training courses, workshops and other events allowing the sharing and dissemination of information.

It is particularly significant to note the inclusion of local development in the definition of the Secretary-General’s duties. The biosphere reserve’s role in promoting local development – which received high visibility in the Seville Strategy and was further profiled in the new 2016 Strategy and Lima Action Plan – clearly appears to have served as a significant motivating factor in Vietnam’s engagement with the programme. As with Palau, the mid-1990s Seville Strategy with its relatively balanced emphasis on the three functions of the biosphere reserve appears to have served to motivate Vietnam’s active engagement with MAB – which in turn influenced and inspired the

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global programme, helping to generate a further shift towards local development as a significant factor contributing to the MAB programme’s core appeal.

By locating the Secretariat of its MAB National Committee at CERE, Vietnam was able to establish a direct link between the Committee and the Hanoi University of

Education’s significant pool of human resources from which to draw contributors to the “national network of experts” that the Committee is expected to mobilize. The placement of the Secretariat within CERE also allowed for a relatively smooth

integration of the duties of the National Committee with the work of the Centre and its host institution, the Hanoi University of Education.

In an example hereof, the Secretary-General noted that biosphere reserves were regularly featured among research and lecture topics under the university’s master’s, PhD and post doctorate programmes. He explained how the Committee arranges for students to undertake research in the biosphere reserves, encouraging them to provide technical advice and guidance to the site managers. Conversely, opportunities are provided for biosphere reserve managers to undertake studies at HUOE in order to improve their management performance. These reciprocal activities are encouraged by the university and facilitated by the integration of official functions; i.e. the HUOE president also serves as Chair of the MAB National Committee. This integration and institutional support facilitates the flow of financial support for activities related to biosphere reserves, as well as – perhaps more significantly - the flow of information and ideas by linking research work to the biosphere reserves. This strong linkage between research, education, biosphere reserve management and network maintenance is good example of how an institutional arrangement can be devised to deliver in practice on one of MAB’s core objective – and may help to explain the relative success of Vietnam’s MAB programme.

While stressing that adherence to Vietnamese national laws is the overarching guiding principle in the MAB National Committee’s work, the Secretary-General took note that thematic focus is placed on the promotion of a partnership between nature

conservation and development aided by the provision of logistic support. Receiving financing not only from the university itself but also from external agencies such as NGOs and other international partners, the Committee stresses the importance of “putting ideas into practice” as its core mission. The Secretary-General cited a series of

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activities under the theme of climate change education as an example – including the

combination of lectures and practical biosphere reserve-based research work supported by the university, government, local community with the MAB National Committee serving in a “linking role”. Likewise, transdisciplinarity is stressed by the Committee, so that – for example - under an overall theme of mangrove research, activities undertaken may include education, social science and other disciplines – while the research itself focuses not only on mangrove ecology but issues such as local livelihoods, ecotourism and other locally significant issues through which the local community can be engaged directly in the research.

The Secretary-General stressed that the concept of integration lies at the core of the organization of Vietnam’s national MAB programme, at multiple levels and in multiple contexts. The Committee is integrated with a national university; research, management and higher education are integrated around the concept of the biosphere reserve; while scientific disciplines are integrated under thematic areas of national significance, such as climate change.

This repeated pattern of reiterated integration can be interpreted as a very faithful adherence to the Seville Strategy, which among its indicators for implementation at the national level includes the following:

 Biosphere reserves are integrated into national and regional research programmes, which are linked to conservation and development policies

 Biosphere reserves are integrated into national monitoring programmes and are linked to similar monitoring sites and networks

 Principles of conservation and sustainable use, as practiced in biosphere reserves, integrated into school programmes (UNESCO (1996). p.14) By pro-actively encouraging, practicing and advocating integrated, transdisciplinary research in and around Vietnam’s biosphere reserves, it could be argued that the Vietnamese MAB Committee takes the concept of integration even beyond the expectations of the Seville Strategy.