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Workshop on

‘Building Capacity for the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) in a larger Europe’

held on the isle of Vilm from the 20-24 June 2004

The international workshop on Building Capacity for the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) in a larger Europe has been a great success!

16 representatives of European GTI focal points and experts from taxonomic initiatives, such as CETAF, FishBase and GBIF, discussed the perspectives of the GTI in Europe. Amongst the participants were colleagues from Estonia, Poland, Ukraine as well as Belgium, France and Sweden. This gave the workshop the necessary broadness in experiences, national situations and scientific background. However, it soon became evident that despite this variety in expert knowledge, taxonomists all over Europe have similar problems with funding, underfinanced infrastructure and too few staff. This seems particulary paradox as the need for taxonomic expertise is increasing in areas such as Conservation, Monitoriung, Invasive Species, and the "2010 target", i.e. significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by the year 2010.

An agreement on a statement, the "Vilm Statement" was quickly reached. The "Vilm Statement" encourage governments and funding bodies to promote the GTI and taxonomy in general, in their countries. Beyond this "Vilm Statement" the workshop has further output, such as an toolkit to facilitate establishing a working National Focal Point for the GTI.

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The Vilm Statement endorsed by this Workshop

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GTI-NFP Workshops results

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List of Participants

Dr. Anne Franklin	Anne.Franklin@naturalsciences.be	Belgium
Dr. Toni Nikolic	toni@botanic.hr	Croatia
Dr. Vaclav Houk	houk@butbn.cas.cz	Czeck Republic
Dr. Henrik Enghoff	HEnghoff@zmuc.ku.dk	Denmark
Mrs. Ulle Reier	reier@ut.ee	Estonia
Prof. Dr. Simon Tillier	tillier@cimrs1.mnhn.fr	France
Dr. Thierry Bourgoin	bourgoin@mnhn.fr	France
Dr. Christoph Häuser	chaeuser@gmx.de	Germany
Dr. Fabian Haas	haas.smns@naturkundemuseum-bw.de	Germany
Dr. Zigmantas Gudžinskas	zigmantas.g@botanika.lt	Lithiuania
Prof. Dr. Wieslaw Bogdanowicz	wieslawb@robal.miiz.waw.pl	Poland
Prof. Dr. Krzysztof Jazdzewski	kryjaz@biol.uni.lodz.pl	Poland
Dr. Maria-Angeles Ramos	m.ramos@mncn.csic.es	Spain
Dr. Anders Silfvergrip	anders.silfvergrip@nrm.se	Sweden
Dr. Reto Nyffeler	rnyffeler@systbot.unizh.ch	Switzerland
Dr. Tatyana Stefanovska	steftat@hotmail.com	Ukraine

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First Circular

Workshop

‘Building Capacity for the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) in a larger Europe’

20.06. – 24.06.2004 International Academy for Nature Conservation Isle of Vilm, Germany

The Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) as a cross-cutting activity of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has the purpose to improve taxonomic knowledge and capacities needed by countries and other stakeholders in their efforts towards ensuring the conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of the benefits of biological diversity.

The main goal of the GTI is to address and overcome the existing "taxonomic impediment" as long recognised by the Parties of the CBD (Darwin Declaration 1998), whereby the lack of human and institutional resources is adversely affecting our ability to achieve the objectives set by the Convention.

The workshop should help to strengthen co-operation between European countries with regard to the implementation of the five operational objectives of the approved GTI programme of work:

• Taxonomic needs assessments
• Capacity development
• Improving access to taxonomic information
• Support for thematic areas of the CBD
• Support for cross-cutting issues of the CBD

Taking into account existing capacities and needs for biosystematics and taxonomy in Europe, the workshop will specifically discuss possible European contributions for implementation of the GTI. Topics for discussion will include ways to sustain and increase taxonomic capacities within Europe, particularly in Eastern European countries, and how European capacities can best be used to support the GTI in other regions of the world. In conclusion, the results of the workshop hopefully should become a milestone towards the formulation of an integrated European strategy for the GTI.

Topics:

Needs & Capacities Assessment

Political environment of taxonomy research

(GEF and EU) funding and funding experiences of taxonomy research

Attractivity of taxonomy to students (age structure of taxonomists)

Actual contributions of GTI to CBD’s cross-cutting issues

Practical aspects of NFP work: contact users and producers of taxonomy; users in your countries; websites and mailing lists; success and failure of existing work

Date:

The workshop will take place from Sunday, 20th to Thursday, 24th June 2004.

Preliminary Programme:

Sunday, 20 June

Arrival of participants, dinner and welcome

Monday, 21 June

Presentations

Tuesday, 22 June

Presentations

Wednesday, 23 June

Presentations

Thursday, 24 June

Departure of participants

Number of Participants:

The International Academy for Nature Conservation Isle of Vilm offers only a limited number of beds, and few hotels are available close-by. In case of too many participants, we might be have to refuse applications on grounds of this limitations. We are sorry to say so and hope that this will not be the case.

Presentations:

Overhead and slide projector, as well as beamer (with computer) are available, so please bring your presentation on CD-Rom, disk or memory stick in a recent version of Microsoft PowerPoint or Acrobat PDF file format.

Conference Language:

English

Posters:

No posters need to be prepared, however, there is limited space for a number of them. Please return to us, if you want to show a poster.

Travel:

The workshop will be held at the International Academy for Nature Conservation Isle of Vilm which is a small island in the Baltic Sea belonging to Germany. Nearest airports are Berlin and Hamburg and it takes about four hours by train from there to the Academy. For travel details see here ...

Travel Support:

There are some financial means to support participants travelling from Central and Eastern European Countries. Details of the support will be given on request.

Contact:

Fabian Haas (haas.smns@naturkundemuseum-bw.de, phone ++ 49 711 8936 172) or

Christoph L. Häuser (chaeuser@gmx.de, phone ++ 49 711 8936 223).

FAX no. is ++ 49 711 8936 100.

Information on the Isle of Vilm, including some on travel ('How to get to Vilm'), is available at the Academy’s website.