The Belgian Focal Point to the Global Taxonomy Initiative
| Release date | 23/08/2007 |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Anne Franklin |
As requested in COP decision V/9, paragraph 4, Belgium has designated its National Focal Point for the GTI: the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, (RBINS) in Brussels.
This museum and research institute harbours zoological collections (roughly 37 million specimens) and a library of global importance, well-equipped research facilities and well-trained scientific and curatorial staff. It is the largest of Belgium's high quality taxonomic research institutes. It collaborates with other Belgian museums and institutes such as the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren) and the National Botanic Garden (Meise), as well as with universities and other research institutes.
The Belgian GTI NFP undertakes a major capacity building programme, thanks to the support of the Belgian Development Cooperation (DGDC). It includes:
- Training in taxonomy and collection management. This tuition, provided in collaboration with the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium) and the National Botanic Garden (Meise, Belgium) cuts across all levels and aims at professional taxonomists, postgraduate, graduate and undergraduate students, technicians and parataxonomists. Training for the individual includes traditional and molecular approaches to taxon identification and classification while institutional support includes reference centre and website development.
- Support for taxonomy-based research and training projects. Belgian taxonomists identify important taxonomic impediments and tackle these by carrying out in situ research projects that incorporate explicit human and/or institutional capacity building in the partner countries
To give impetus to some of these objectives the Belgian GTI NFP annually launches two calls for proposals:
- Call for taxonomy-based individual and institutional capacity building projects (external call, open to developing countries)
- Call for taxonomy-based research-and-training projects (internal call, open only to research with RBINS promotor)
How to contact us?
Belgian Focal Point to the Global Taxonomy Initiative
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
Rue Vautier 29
1000 Brussels
Belgium
Tel: +32 2 627 41 24
Fax: +32 2 627 41 41
Email: cbd-gti@naturalsciences.be
