On June 19th 2019, the United Nations declared the Isle of Wight a World Biosphere Reserve, an extraordinary achievement made possible by the Island’s brilliant Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team.
At a special meeting of UNESCO, the UN’s scientific and cultural agency, the 350 square miles of the island’s landscape and coastline together with its Solent marine habitats, were officially welcomed into the biosphere family comprising over 700 amazing locations across 124 countries and 6 continents.
The Isle of Wight joins spectacular places such as Mount Kenya, the Great Gobi Desert, the Black Forest, the Tuscan Islands and the Danube Delta, all sharing a common purpose – to protect their internationally important biodiversity, landscape and heritage and to use these essential resources to improve the lives of their people and communities. The essential work of creating living and working places that are truly resilient, healthy, and sustainable has never been so urgent, the need for a different, better relationship between the human and natural worlds has never been so clear.
So today we celebrate the first anniversary of this fantastic accolade and the task it has set us, to build a brighter future.
Joel Bateman from the Isle of Wight AONB takes you through the story of the Isle of Wight achieving Biosphere status and explains just what this incredible UNESCO designation means for the Island.
In this wonderful short animation you can learn what a Biosphere is very quickly!
