11. Letter from Wuhan:
A report on the Third Global Botanic Gardens Congress, David
Galbraith, Royal Botanical Gardens
Some of the large collections of
wetland plants at Wuhan Botanical Garden
Photo: David Galbraith |
Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Wuhan Botanical Garden
and the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized a very exciting and
productive global congress for botanical gardens involved in conservation
in April, 2007.
Botanic Gardens Conservation International organizes a major botanic
gardens congress on conservation every three or so years. Eight
such meetings were held in various parts of the world prior to 2000.
In 2000, the congress was combined with the annual meeting of the
America Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, and was termed
the First Global Botanic Gardens Congress. The 2000 meeting was
held in Asheville, North Carolina, and has often been referred to
since simply as "Asheville." The second global congress
was held in 2004 in Barcelona, Spain. The Third Global Congress
was held from 16-20 April 2007 at Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
These congresses are major meetings. Approximately 1,000 people
attended the Wuhan congress, representing over 350 gardens from
89 countries, according to the conference organizers. The congress
was a major milestone in the development of the mission of our sector.
Three dominant themes are emerging as the raison d’être
of botanical gardens: to conserve plant diversity in the face of
the present extinction crisis, to promote the sustainable, positive
benefits of using plant diversity sustainably, especially to support
human well-being, and to use the capacities of our intuitions to
make positive contributions to combat climate change and mitigate
it’s effects.
The underlying theme of the organizers in planning this congress
was to assess the contributions of botanical gardens around the
world to achieving the targets of the Global Strategy for Plant
Conservation, or GSPC. Several symposia and plenary sessions directly
addressed the contributions botanical gardens are making to the
GSPC, including through education, ex situ and in situ conservation,
and research undertakings such as the development of the first working
version of a global flora, which is the first target of the GSPC.
The next global congress is scheduled for 2010. The location has
yet to be decided, but the organizers announced that they have received
a bid from the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland to host the fourth
congress. BGCI is expected to finalize the location later in 2007.
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