Biosphere reserves are demarcated into ________ .

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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).

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 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.  (c) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2022 Q12 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q12 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer