MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 12 of 100

Correct — option (1). A biosphere reserve is not a single protected block but a set of three concentric zones, and the three are the core zone, the buffer zone and the transition zone. The design follows from what the reserve is for: it has to conserve a representative ecosystem, support research and education, and allow the people who live in and around it to go on making a living, and no single régime of protection can do all three at once. The core zone therefore carries the strictest protection. It is a legally constituted area, usually an existing national park or sanctuary, kept free of human interference apart from research and monitoring, and it is the part of the reserve in which the ecosystem is expected to remain undisturbed. The buffer zone surrounds the core and admits only activities compatible with it — scientific work, environmental education, training, restoration of degraded land, and controlled tourism — so that the core is never exposed directly to pressure from outside. The transition zone, sometimes called the zone of cooperation, is the outermost belt and is the one where people live and work: settlements, cropping, forestry, grazing and recreation continue there, and the object is to manage them sustainably in cooperation with local communities, government agencies and researchers rather than to exclude them. The scheme belongs to the Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO, begun in 1971, and the three zones are common to every reserve in its World Network. The only option that names all three, and nothing else, is option (1).

• (2)Core zone, buffer zone and micro ecological zone — This row keeps the core and the buffer but replaces the transition zone with a micro ecological zone, and no such zone exists in the scheme. The substitution is the most damaging of the three, because the transition zone is the part of a biosphere reserve that distinguishes it from an ordinary protected area. A national park or a wildlife sanctuary is defined by what it excludes; a biosphere reserve is defined by the fact that it includes an inhabited outer belt in which cultivation, forestry, grazing and settlement continue and are managed sustainably with the people who depend on them. Drop the transition zone and the reserve becomes just another enclosure with a fence around it, which is precisely the model the Man and the Biosphere Programme was designed to move beyond.
• (3)Buffer zone, transition zone and micro ecological zone — This row drops the core zone, which is the one part of a biosphere reserve that cannot be dispensed with. The core is the legally protected, undisturbed heart of the reserve, generally an existing national park or sanctuary, in which no activity is permitted except research and monitoring, and both the other zones exist in relation to it — the buffer to shield it and the transition to accommodate the human use that the core cannot carry. A reserve consisting only of a buffer and a transition zone would have nothing to buffer and nothing to make the transition from. The invented micro ecological zone in this row should also be treated as a warning sign: an unfamiliar technical-sounding term in an option is far more often a fabrication than a piece of knowledge the candidate has missed.
• (4)Core zone, transition zone and micro ecological zone — This row keeps the core and the transition zone but removes the buffer, and it is the version most likely to be chosen by a candidate who half-remembers the scheme, since core and transition are the two extremes and the middle term is the one that slips. The buffer zone does the practical work of the design: it surrounds the core, absorbs the pressure that would otherwise fall on it, and permits the uses that are compatible with conservation but not with strict protection — research stations, education and training, ecological restoration and regulated tourism. Without it the strictly protected core would abut inhabited and cultivated land directly. As in the other two wrong rows, the invented micro ecological zone occupies the place of the genuine one, so the term itself identifies every wrong answer here.

Biosphere reserves belong to a different family of instruments from the protected areas created under the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972. National parks, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation reserves and community reserves are legal categories with defined restrictions; a biosphere reserve is a designation under the Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO, launched in 1971, which is laid over existing protected areas and the country around them and is managed for three purposes together — conservation of ecosystems, species and genetic variation; development that is socially and ecologically sustainable; and logistic support for research, monitoring, education and training. The zoning expresses those three functions in space, with protection strongest at the centre and human use greatest at the edge. India designated its first biosphere reserve, the Nilgiri, in 1986, and a number of Indian reserves have since been admitted to UNESCO's World Network, among them the Nilgiri, Gulf of Mannar, Sundarban, Nanda Devi, Nokrek, Pachmarhi, Simlipal, Achanakmar-Amarkantak, Great Nicobar, Agasthyamala, Khangchendzonga and Panna. A parallel zoning is used in the tiger reserves created under Project Tiger, where a critical tiger habitat forms the core and a surrounding buffer is managed for coexistence, and the resemblance between the two schemes is worth holding since papers test them in the same block.

Environment questions of this kind are a fixture of state commission papers because the answer is a fixed list that can be checked in one line, and the Commission builds the wrong options by the standard method: keep two genuine items, drop the third, and put an invented but plausible-sounding term in its place. Here that term is the micro ecological zone, and it appears in all three wrong rows. The lesson is a general one and is worth more than the fact itself. An option containing a term you have never encountered is far more likely to be a fabrication than a gap in your reading, particularly when the same unfamiliar term recurs in several options while the familiar ones are shuffled around it. The complementary habit is to learn such lists complete and in order — core, buffer, transition, from the centre outwards — because a list learnt as a set of three related ideas resists a substitution that a list learnt as three separate words does not. Note also that the stem is a fill-in-the-blank, a form this paper uses often, and that the blank governs the whole of each option rather than a single word in it.

• A biosphere reserve is divided into three zones — the core zone, the buffer zone and the transition zone — under the Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO, which was launched in 1971.
• The core zone is legally protected and kept free of human interference apart from research and monitoring; it is usually an existing national park or wildlife sanctuary.
• The buffer zone surrounds the core and permits only activities compatible with conservation, such as research, environmental education, training, restoration and regulated tourism.
• The transition zone, or zone of cooperation, is the outermost belt, where settlement, cropping, forestry, grazing and recreation continue and are managed sustainably with local communities.
• The Nilgiri, designated in 1986, was India's first biosphere reserve, and Indian reserves in UNESCO's World Network include the Nilgiri, Sundarban, Nanda Devi, Simlipal, Great Nicobar, Khangchendzonga and Panna.

• Accepting an invented but technical-sounding term such as a micro ecological zone, when an unfamiliar term repeated across several options is usually the fabrication rather than the gap in your reading
• Dropping the buffer zone from the scheme, since the two extremes are easier to recall than the middle term that does the practical work
• Treating a biosphere reserve as a legal category under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, when it is a UNESCO designation laid over existing protected areas
• Forgetting that the transition zone is inhabited and cultivated, which is what distinguishes a biosphere reserve from a fenced protected area

Biosphere reserves appear in MPSC papers as list questions of this kind, as location questions asking which state a named reserve lies in, and as comparison questions asking how a biosphere reserve differs from a national park or a sanctuary. The zoning is the single most frequently tested detail, followed by the identity of India's first reserve and the membership of UNESCO's World Network. The Commission also sets the same material as statement items, in which one sentence misdescribes the activities permitted in a particular zone — allowing cultivation in the core, or excluding people from the transition zone — so the permitted uses of each zone are worth learning as carefully as the names. A single note holding the three zones with their permitted activities, the year the programme began, the first Indian reserve and a list of the reserves by state answers every version.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which zone of a biosphere reserve are settlements, cultivation and forestry by local communities permitted and managed sustainably ?

  • (a)The core zone
  • (b)The buffer zone
  • (c)The transition zone
  • (d)No zone permits such activity

  Answer(c) The transition zone — it is the outermost belt, also called the zone of cooperation, and its inclusion is what distinguishes a biosphere reserve from a fenced protected area. The core zone admits nothing but research and monitoring, while the buffer zone permits only uses compatible with conservation, such as education, training, restoration and regulated tourism.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which was the first biosphere reserve to be designated in India ?

  • (a)Nanda Devi
  • (b)Nilgiri
  • (c)Sundarban
  • (d)Great Nicobar

  Answer(b) Nilgiri — designated in 1986, it was the first of the Indian biosphere reserves and was later admitted to UNESCO's World Network. Nanda Devi, Sundarban and Great Nicobar are all genuine Indian biosphere reserves and are also in the World Network, which is what makes them effective distractors; only the order of designation separates them from the answer.