Botany 2000

Botany 2000 is the name for a scientific program, organized under the auspices of UNESCO. While a similar UNESCO program, ASOMPS, focus on promotion of collaboration and co-operation between scientists in Asia, Botany 2000 is composed of activities in Asia and Africa. Activities in Europe are confined to support of herbaria in countries in transition and reconstruction e.g. Georgia.

The Botany 2000 program was accepted by the UNESCO General Conference in 1989.

Activities in Africa and Asia subsume activities in predecessor networks such as the:

The Botany 2000-Asia program is the new name for the former Southeast Asian Cooperative Program on Descriptive Botany (SEABOP) and of the work being carried out by the majority of the other organizations involved in the Asian Coordinating Group for Chemistry (ACGC).

Botany 2000-Asia is implemented by UNESCO's New Delhi Office and focuses on the taxonomy, and biological and cultural diversity of medicinal and ornamental plants, and their protection against environmental pollution, as well as ethnobiological classification and biological systematics and the correct documentation of useful plants through collection of voucher specimens. Within the framework of the project Botany 2000-Asia, UNESCO supports also the computerization of holdings and locations in herbaria throughout Asia.

Under the Botany 2000-Asia program some conferences were held:

Neville Marchant, Director of the Western Australian Herbarium in Perth, has been involved in the Botany 2000-Asia programme since its inception.

The UNESCO Office, New Delhi also published the Botany 2000-Asia Newsletter four times a year. A typical issue contains news on workshops, training courses, databases, projects and forthcoming meetings as well as reports on unauthorized collection and export of medicinal plants from the region. The editor requests one to two page articles and reports of seminars and meetings of general relevance to botany and ethnobotany in Asia. Apart from producing the newsletter, the UNESCO Botany 2000-Asia program sponsors occasional workshops on the taxonomy, ethnobotany and of various plant families, as well as training courses in herbarium techniques and curation.

...
Wikipedia