The UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB), with 631 reserves in 119 countries, is an Intergovernmental Scientific Program to establish a scientific basis to improve relationships between people and their environments. Biosphere Reserves (BR) have 3 zones where scientists, NGOs, local communities work together (the core is mainly for long-term conservation and research, the buffer zone is for activities like environmental education, monitoring eco-tourism and research, the transition zone allows sustainable activities (agriculture, settlements) The concept of BRs is interesting to model sustainable development and to monitor ecosystem responses to global changes. Well-known as sensitive areas some tropical forest are already classified as BR. Recognizing the importance of this ecosystem across the world, in 2009, 3 institutions signed a MoC representing, Brazil, Indonesia and DR Congo addressing mainly capacity building, however the exchange of scientific information and joint trans-continental publications remains limited.

The main objective of our project is to explore the various strategies and research priorities within the BRs and to facilitate knowledge and experience exchanges in order to become a model for sustainable development in ecosystem research.In MAB context, the partners are already active in the reserves of Luki and Yangambi in DR Congo. Due to their international collaborations and competences, they form a good basis to setup a wider MAB scientific experts networking platform to overcome the fragmentation in knowledge exchange. It is the ambition of this proposal to go however beyond Africa by including participation from other MAB areas. Particularly relevant, would be the comparison between the Congo and Amazonas Basins. Collaboration with Brazil is targeted. The Indonesian component will also be addressed, the UNSESCO MAB office agreed to support the participation of an Indonesian representative. Unless additional funding would be mobilized a visit to Indonesia is not foreseen.

The platform has a multidisciplinary scientific and socio-economical scope : Conservation, biodiversity and habitat loss, climate change, carbon intake, ecosystem services, land use and urbanization and involvement of the local communities. The workplan reads as follow:

• A group of multidisciplinary experts is set up (year one)
• The criteria to assess and analyze the functioning of MAB areas will be defined by the expert group together with the relevant stakeholders (year one)
• A delegation of experts will perform local assessments in the selected MAB areas in Congo and Brazil and organize expert workshops (year 2 and 3)
• Production of assessment, strategic planning and sustainability reports (Year 3)
• Session organized during a MAB program event to outreach a worldwide audience and gather their input. The UNESCO MAB office is very positive on this idea and has already given its agreement in principle for such a session. The MAB Council meets annually at in Paris or in a MAB ICC Member State.

Expected results are a better understanding and visibility of the research performed in the MAB areas. The networking platform will establish links between stakeholders active in the MAB reserves with the aim to facilitate exchanges and transfer of information. Scientific outputs will be enhanced by joint publications and more collaborative activities. The final goal is to convince UNESCO to sustain and manage this scientific networking platform, thus good use cases and proofs of concepts are needed. The partners of this proposal believe that the Belgian and Congolese partners can achieve this goal. The partners have already identified different hypothesis:

• What are the research activities primarily conducted in the different MAB areas and the priorities expressed by the population, the scientists, of the governments and the UNESCO
• Has the size of the MAB reserve an influence
• How accessible are the MAB areas to the different users. Here the impact of the new ABS Nagoya protocol needs to be analyzed
• Dissemination and capacity building activities will be assessed

The adequacy of the consortium is illustrated here:.

• The Royal Museum for Central Africa has experience in developing various research projects (in collaboration with national and international universities/partners) in Luki and Yangambi notably with  PhDs and via several BELSPO projects (COMBINFO, BIOSPHERETRAITS,..). The section of wood biology is specialized in the development of non-destructive methods to collect wood sample (growth, carbon intake, dendrochronology), forest inventories, management of non-timber tree product, management of wood collection (the third largest collection in the world).
• The Botanic Garden Meise is active in DR Congo and Brazil, where they study the evolutionary history of tropical Atlantic rainforests. Meise hosts the private collection of Von Martius and has made the information about 8 families of this collections available online (http://projects.bebif.be/enbi/martius/text?vol =3&p=1&page=107). The Von Martius' private botanical contains ca. 300,000 specimens representing 65,000 species from all over the world. Approximately half of them came from the Amazon Basin.
• The Universities of Ghent and Liege have a large expertise in forest management, climate change, assessing Carbon intake (using Flux towers), study of endemic or invasive species. It is the aim to compare whether these topics are also investigated in other MAB areas, and to find out what approaches and priorities have to be set up to obtain quality results and a proper information flow within the network
• The African partner (ERAIFT) is specialized in training numerous students and young researchers in forest ecology and conservation and will act as channel to outreach the local stake holders in the MAB areas. They will organize the travel and transit of the visiting experts on site.
• The partners participate to the above mentioned projects jointly and many of the PhD thesis are conducted with promoters from the participating universities.

Brazilian and Indonesian institutions are due the limit of 5, not direct partners, but they will be actively involved. The partners of the projects have several contacts in Brazil for example with the Centro de Referenda em Informagao Ambiental (CRIA), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) delegation, the representative of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and via UNESCO/BELSPO, contacts exist with the University of Para in B6lem, which is acting as UNESCO Chair for South-South cooperation for sustainable development. UNESECO MAB (secretariat of Paris) have committed to support the participation of Indonesia. The funding asked to BELPSO covers the setting up of the network and the costs of the local assessment campaigns and events. The final session back to back with an UNESCO MAB conference will be co-sponsored by UNESCO.