Planning for sustainable development and tourism in biosphere reserves: a metagovernance appraisal

Biosphere Reserves can be incubators for innovative approaches that foster sustainable tourism and destination resilience. Yet, research focusing on management and planning at Biospheres Reserves is limited and fragmented. In particular, it fails to address how the overarching Biosphere Reserve programme and the UN-SDGs framing influence Biosphere Reserve at the site level. The aim of this study is to analyse tourism-relevant policies and regulations implemented at Biosphere Reserves and the currently overlooked nexus between the Biosphere Reserve programme and the UN-SDGs. Two Biosphere Reserves sites were chosen for this study: the Archipelago Sea Area Biosphere Reserve in Finland and the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere in the United Kingdom. A metagovernance appraisal was adopted to analyse context and processes, governance archetypes, limitations and metagovernance alternatives. The findings indicate that there are different political and institutional governance framings at the two reserves leading to diverging approaches to sustainable tourism. Additionally, sites resort to metagovernance alternatives to address governance shortcomings and foster policy coherency. This study contributes to a greater understanding of governance practices within the context of Biosphere Reserves and provides a timely appraisal of site planning and metagovernance from a public policy and tourism perspectives.