Meeting on the Scientific Grant was held at the UNESCO Chair "Socio-Economic Models of the Biosphere Reserves" at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics

A meeting of the research team of the grant "Development of a scientific and methodological approach to the formation of a unified passport of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (on the example of specially protected areas of the Russian Federation)" was held at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.

The meeting was devoted to discussing the research roadmap and the formation of a periodic reporting system. The participants of the meeting reviewed in detail the key stages of the project implementation, methodological approaches and the distribution of tasks.

Viktoria Viktorovna Zunde, Doctor of Economics, Professor of the Department of National and Regional Economics at the Russian University of Economics, made a statement on the need to build statistical series by groups of indicators for an objective assessment of the state of biosphere reserves. She stressed that the creation of unified databases and verified time series is the foundation for further analysis and ranking of specially protected areas.

Maria Aleksandrovna Kovalenko, an employee of the Basic Department of Chemistry of Innovative Materials and Technologies, State Adviser of the Russian Federation, 3rd class, presented the distribution of research areas by performers. As part of the university-funded project, it is planned to develop a scientific and methodological approach to creating a unified passport of the UNESCO biosphere reserve and a methodology for classifying (ranking) such territories using the example of two pilot protected areas.

Professor Pavel Vasilyevich Terelyansky, Co-chair of the UNESCO Chair "Socio-Economic Models of the Biosphere Reserves", explained the methodology for calculating the Index of Institutional Integration of Reserves. He presented the preliminary structure of the unified passport, which includes geographical, economic, environmental and social blocks, as well as criteria for assessing anthropogenic stress and environmental quality in various functional zones of reserves.

The participants noted that one of the key problems is the fragmentation and incompleteness of existing data on the degree of anthropogenic impact on ecosystems. In this regard, special attention will be paid to the collection of field data and verification of information.

Following the meeting, the stages of work were approved: from the analysis of Russian and international experience in the certification of protected areas to the testing of the developed methodology in pilot territories and the preparation of the final report. The results of the research will be presented at scientific conferences in Russia and abroad. The developed passports and ranking methodology will create the basis for a unified database of biosphere reserves of the Russian Federation and can be used for annual monitoring of reserves' activities and public awareness.