Selected project activities

Apple orchard

Biosphere Sustainability Project participants have:

  • Forest bed
    completed several masters theses and doctoral dissertations, published a variety of papers and delivered many conference presentations on BSP themes and related issues including governance for sustainability, social learning in complex systems, institutional change, place-based governance, contributions from civil society organizations, partnerships and collaborations, community capacity building, and particular creative initiatives, many of them using biosphere reserve case studies
  • prepared general working papers on complex open systems, governance for sustainability and social innovation, and two major working paper series – on governance matters and innovation and sustainability, drawing ideas from multiple sources and focusing on the experiences of biosphere reserves and model forests
  • examined the range and extent of “social innovations” in Canadian biosphere reserves, especially examples of a two-way “scaling-out” process through adoption of interesting ideas from various sources, as well as local initiatives that are at different phases of the innovation process
  • Snow covered evergreen tree top
    helped to organize workshops and conferences to address community well-being and related sustainability issues in the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve and in the Oak Ridges Moraine protected landscape north of Toronto and a prospective biosphere reserve.
  • contributed, on behalf of the Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, to the preparation of documentation required for a proposed expansion of the Long Point Biosphere Reserve, and to preparations for the nomination of a proposed Oak Ridges Moraine/Greenbelt Biosphere Reserve
  • contributed to the required periodic reviews of biosphere reserves in Canada, e.g. Waterton Biosphere Reserve, Alberta, 2008; Mount St-Hilaire Biosphere Reserve, Quebec, 2008; Redberry Lake Biosphere Reserve, Saskatchewan, 2009
  • Sunrise over a lake
    served as formal or informal advisor to, for example, the Board for the Long Point Biosphere Reserve, the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, the Redberry Lake Biosphere Reserve (Saskatchewan), and participants in the successful nomination leading to the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia)
  • built a sustainability and complex systems based contextual framework for monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of major growth management planning initiatives in the Oak Ridges/Greenbelt area surrounding the Greater Toronto Area.