DAAD East-West-Dialogue Programme 2021

The focus region of the project is the border region of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova with forest ecosystems in the northeastern Carpathian arc (Ukraine/ Romania), which in turn influence the river ecosystems in Ukraine, Romania and Moldova that originate there. These include the Tisza, the longest tributary of the Danube, and the upper reaches of the two major river systems of the Prut and Dniester, which influence large parts of the Republic of Moldova. 

The goal of the project series is to initiate and establish a dialogue in and with the regions with partners and the civil society from all 3 countries as well as the interdisciplinary development of approaches to solving conflicts and ideas for conflict prevention on the basis of a joint situation analysis on site. Therefore, the focus lies on the identification of possibilities of how local civil society actors can be actively involved in the analysis and strategy development or how interdisciplinary and international cooperation and thus pluralism and cooperative learning can be strengthened at different levels.

The project should contribute to relevant training content and methodological competence as well as to exchange and networking for representatives of the young generation as future decision-makers and likewise lead to the establishment of permanent structures for joint (research) activities besides individual exchange on the topic of the project.

• 10-day study trip to Western Ukraine with international students and all project partners (currently planned in August)
  • Documentation as blog created by Eberswalde students
• Development of a joint long-term inter-institutional research exchange platform (see below)
• 6 scholarships for research stays (3 German students in project region, 3 Ukrainian researchers in Germany)

From 7-14 August 2021 a group of about 50 students, lecturers and practitioners from Ukraine, Moldova, and Germany went on a joint excursion through Western Ukraine. Areas visited were:

• Biosphere Reserve Roztochya with a rewetted area (example of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change), clear cut areas (installation of temperature data loggers for micro climate research) as well as the core and buffer zone of a UNESCO World Heritage Beech Forest component part;
• Carpathian Biosphere Reserve with large-scale clear-cutted forest sites just outside of the BR, Krasna Poloninya as well as the Shyrokyi-Luh and Uholka UNESCO primeval Beech forest component parts.

At the end of the trip a new cooperation contract between the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve and Eberswalde University were signed to further strengthen and intensify the collaboration.

Below you find a blog about the experiences and findings made during the excursion and through further research created by master students of the Global Change Management study programme, as well as a video about the excursion created by a student of the International Forest Ecosystem Management study programme.

#Biosphere Research – edge effects between clear cuts and natural protected forests

The second activity was planned to be an excursion-based seminar in Moldova in autumn 2021. Due to ongoing contact restrictions and the resulting planning uncertainty, this activity has already been cancelled and transformed into the development of long-term inter-institutional research of the partner universities together with biosphere reserves.

A research idea has developed from the previous year's project to collect microclimate data in beech forests in Ukraine and Moldova. Methodologically, this builds on the already ongoing forest ecology projects of the Centre for Econics (Gläserner Forst, CleverForst). To record the data, data loggers will be purchased and installed to continuously record temperature data over the vegetation phase. In addition, a platform is to be set up in which the data can be entered and visualised over the years, which can also be expanded for use in other joint research projects between the universities.

Thus, in addition to the results of the forest ecology research, the benefit for the project will be in particular the expansion and continuation of joint research projects of students and researchers of the project partner universities and biosphere reserves. In addition, the platform to be created is to be integrated into a series of online tools that were created last year to strengthen the exchange with and about biosphere reserves. These include the YouTube channel #BiosphereShare, which was created in a DAAD 'Higher Education Dialogue with Western Balkan Countries' project, and a multilingual forum platform #BiosphereDialogue, which was created in a Civil Society Cooperation project funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The logical next step, therefore, was to set up a #BiosphereResearch platform within the framework of this project.

On the occasion of 50 years Man and the Biosphere Programme the Austrian MAB National Committee has organised and financed a special issue on Biosphere Reserves in Mountain Regions in the open-access journal eco.mont – Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research and Management, published in November 2021. Based on the long cooperation and supported by the DAAD, the project team together with partners on site were able to succesfully contribute to this special issue with a report reflecting and paying tribute to the cross-border cooperation in the Carpathians.