Heritage and landscape narratives: how rural stereotypes are shaping UNESCO biosphere reserves

Protected areas and other areas with well-known designations,such as national parks and UNescO World heritage sites, respec-tively, are paramount to tourism. these designations offer a narra-tive through which visitors can interpret and experience the locallandscape and culture. For many designation types, those narra-tives are clear: iconic landscapes and nature experiences in nationalparks and outstanding cultural value at world heritage sites, forexample. But what about UNescO Biosphere Reserves (BRs)? Whichlandscape narratives are shaping the discourse and perception ofBRs, and how do they integrate their sometimes contradictory orcontentious dual mandate of both conservation and sustainabledevelopment? to understand how BRs interpret and narrate theirlandscapes, we conducted a comparative analysis of the communi-cation of nine european BRs located throughout Germany, italyand sweden. Using a constructivist concept of essentialization, weexamined how the BRs define their characteristic features and sig-nature experiences. Despite the cultural, ecological, and socioeco-nomic diversity of the sites analyzed, we observed an overarchingnarrative of ‘rurality’, which repetitively over-simplified rural areaswith stereotypical and nostalgic depictions. considering this againstthe framework of UNescO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme,the findings of this research reveal a gap, as topics that are com-monly associated with sustainable development, like innovation,technology, digitalization, renewable energy, transportation, sub-culture, and art are rarely ever addressed. By framing BRs as ruralidylls, the processes of urbanization are largely overlooked, eventhough they are crucial for sustainability and should therefore havea firm place in the MaB programme, whose mandate is to designmodels for sustainable development. Moreover, prioritizing tourismas the primary development strategy, particularly when based onidealized rurality narratives, risks creating a path dependency thathinders alternative drivers for innovation that do not align withthis narrative.