CETAF and its 63 institutions join the European Commission Global Coalition “United for #Biodiversity”
The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) and its institutions, including the Plant Science and Biodiversity Center SAS, joined the “United for #Biodiversity" Global Coalition. The Coalition began its activity during World Wildlife Day, on March 3, 2020. The aim of the Coalition's communication campaign is to raise awareness before the key Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15) in 2021 on the need to protect biodiversity. A new global framework for nature conservation and restoration is expected during COP 15.
The CETAF institutions are a scientific community. Their work focuses on the study, preservation and making accessible the heritage consisting of over 1,5 billion specimens hosted in biological collections These resources and expertise are available within the Coalition to raise citizens' awareness of the environmental crisis, which is affecting biodiversity on our planet and significantly interferes with the socio-cultural and economic aspects of today's society. The current pandemic situation reminds us of the urgency to drastically rethink our society's relationship with nature. Continuous human pressure on ecosystems has such an impact on nature's equilibrium that it threatens the sustainability of life on Earth.
CETAF has 37 members, representing 63 institutions that hold over half of the world's biological collections, 80% of the world's described biodiversity in the form of items, documents, collections and data, and work in over 100 collaborative projects. It brings together more than 5,000 researchers from European natural science museums, botanic gardens and research institutions. The Institute of Botany of the Plant Science and Biodiversity Center SAS is the national contact point of the Slovak consortium, which has been a member of CETAF since 2010. In addition to the IB PSBC SAS, the members of the Slovak consortium also include the Department of Botany of the Comenius University in Bratislava, the Department of Zoology of the Comenius University in Bratislava, the Institute of SAS, the Faculty of Science of the UPJŠ in Košice and the Natural History Museum of the SNM.
Text and photo: Anna Bérešová, Plant Science and Biodiversity Center SAS