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UNESCO Chair: Sustainable heritage and environmental management

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Portrait of Inger Måren standing besides the UNESCO nameplate

Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2015)

The UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Heritage and Environmental Management - Nature and Culture - shall promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation on sustainable heritage and environmental management, with a special focus on Norway's very first Biosphere Area - Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere - under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme (MAB).

Our Chair is held by Dr. Inger Elisabeth Måren. She focuses on the dynamics in coupled human and natural systems, so-called social-ecological systems, including themes like sustainable resource management, sustainable land use, ecosystem services, agroecology, and sustainable food systems. She works with colleagues across the social and natural sciences to elucidate links between anthropogenic activities and the environment, in Europe, Asia, North-America and Africa. In particular, she researches pertinent aspects of sustainable development in the context of SDG15 - Life on Land - where sustainable land use is a central theme. Måren also develops and teaches several of the sustainable development related courses at the University of Bergen (e.g., SDG110, SDG215SDG214, SDG207 and SDG607) and she is member of the Sustainability Collegium at UiB as well as the Norwegian UNESCO Commission.

Nordhordland Biosphere Day
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Learn about the scientific activity in Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve!

On June 1st, UiB's UNESCO Group and Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Reserve is arranging the BIOSPHERE DAY in Knarvik, Nordhordland. UNESCO Group members will present current and previous scientific projects from the region, and share reuslts and insights. The event is open to the public.

World heritage forum
View of Bryggen in Bergen

Interview with the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Heritage and Environmental Management

The Norwegian World Heritage Forum 2023 is being held in Bergen on May 3-5. In connection to this, UNESCO Chair Inger Måren was recently interviewed about her work with Biosphere Reserves. Dr. Måren will also be giving a talk on her experiences with research in, with and for UNESCO Biosphere...

PhD Defence
Jarrod Cusens

Mapping the Connections

PhD candidate Jarrod Cusens, connected to the UNESCO Chair and CESAM, is defending his thesis "Mapping the Connections" on Monday April 24.

CULTIVATE partner meeting in Estonia
Group photo of the nine meeting participators in front of a light blue, wooden building with a lot of windows. Snow on the ground and on the house roof.

Partner Meeting in Hiiumaa

After dedicating most of the last six months of the project to conducting interviews, the CULTIVATE project partners finally met in person, this time on the Hiiumaa island in the West Estonian Archipelago – almost exactly a year since the first in-person meeting in Trebon in March 2022.

SDG CONFERENCE 2023
SDG conference logo

Day Zero: Pathways to participatory research and knowledge co-production: notes from the ‘field’

Join members of the UNESCO Chair Group and the Centre for Sustainable Area Management (CeSAM) for a workshop on participatory research during Day Zero, February 8th 2023.

Background for the UNESCO Chair at UiB

The University of Bergen was awarded a UNESCO Chair entitled Sustainable Heritage and Environmental Management - Nature and Culture, in 2015. The UNESCO Chair is part of UNESCO's international network UNITWIN included in the UNESCO/UNITWIN Chairs programme, which includes close to 800 Chairs at 700 institutions in 116 countries, covering universities across the world and a wide range of topics.

Through this network, higher education and research institutions all over the globe pool their resources, both human and material, to address pressing challenges and contribute to the development of their societies. In areas lacking expertise, chairs and networks also contribute to strengthening North-South-South cooperation.

The application to the UNESCO Commission for our UNESCO Chair was prepared based on the experiences of several major interdisciplinary projects carried out at UiB and the preparatory work on the first UNESCO Biosphere Area in Norway - Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere. The application was designed with inspiration from Laval University in Quebec, Canada, which has had a UNESCO Chair for a number of years, and the framework of the Chair was presented at the International UNESCO Conference held in Bergen in 2014. In Norway, we received our very first UNESCO Chair for Education on Sustainable Lifestyles, held by Victoria Thoresen, at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in 2014.

UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme (MAB) is central to the work of the UNESCO Chair at UiB. The mission of the MAB programme is to help the Member States achieve the sustainable development goals (Agenda 2030) by actively using the biosphere areas as 'Science for Sustainability Support Sites' - biosphere areas being model areas for sustainable development. Norway was appointed its very first biosphere area on June 19th 2019 - Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere

The UNESCO and uniTwin logo made up of the acronyms letters with the outline of a porch and lines of latitude and longitude

The UNESCO-UiB contract outlines the framework and responsibilities of the UNESCO Chair at UiB.