Global Taxonomy Initiative

In implementing COP decision V/9, paragraph 4, Belgium designated in 2001 the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels as its National Focal Point to the Global Taxonomy Initiative.

The overacting objective of Belgium’s GTI National Focal Point is to reduce the so-called taxonomic impediment that hinders the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The specific objective of the Belgian GTI is to help with the establishment of the needed taxonomic and curatorial capacity in developing countries. To that end the Belgian GTI NFP has developed a demand-driven program of work that involves training, liberation of taxonomic data and know how and international and institutional cooperation.

The second issue of the Belgian CBD News Bulletin explains how taxonomy battles poverty.

One of the most relevants outputs of the Belgian GTI NFP are the Abc Taxa manuals. These peer-reviewed manuals are dedicated to capacity building in zoological and botanical taxonomy, in collection management and in good practices in taxonomic and curatorial research. They facilitates the liberation of taxonomic and curatorial skills, competences and know-how needed to carry out basic to advanced taxonomic research on a particular living taxon.

See the Belgian GTI website for more information on our work.