Challenges of Transition of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Towards a Biosphere Reserve: Managing wildfires, ecosystem services, biodiversity under radioactivity contamination and climate changes

Sergiy Zibtsev

Head of the Regional Eastern European Fire Monitoring Center (REEFMC), Institute  of Forest Landscape-Park Management, Fulbright Scholar 2004/2005, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine

Dr Sergiy Zibtsev is an international expert in fire management, in particularly, in study of fire management issues in forests contaminated by radionuclides. Much of his life’s work has been done in the Exclusion Zones surrounding Chernobyl – site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. He is a professor and senior researcher in forestry and forest ecology at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev. In 2004 and 2005 he was a visiting scientist and a Fulbright scholar at Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Since 2008 he has been a member of the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s Team of specialists on forest fires, since 2013 - director of the Regional Eastern European Fire Monitoring Center. 

In 2013 become a laureate of the Green Star Award established by Green Cross International, OCHA and UNEP.