darwin initiative in nepal

The U.K. Government's Darwin Initiative is a small grants programme that aims to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of resources in less developed countries. The current three-year project, Building Capacity for Plant Biodiversity, Inventory and Conservation in Nepal (Project No. 162/12/030) was awarded to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in May 2003, and involves three partner institutes within Nepal: the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST); Department of Plant Resources (DPR), HM Government of Nepal, Ministry of Forestry and Soil Conservation; and Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University (CDB/TU). The purpose of the project is to strengthen the in-country institutional base for plant taxonomy, so that Nepal has the reference collections of its rich flora and the necessary taxonomic expertise to meet thier needs in responding to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The first Darwin Initiative project to address the botanical needs of Nepal was Plant Information and Technology Transfer for Nepal, run by the Natural History Museum, London. This mobilised information from UK collections in the form of an electronic database and trained five people. The current project builds on this earlier work, but focuses on developing collections within Nepal and training 18 people in a more diverse range of taxonomic and conservation assessment skills. This will be achieved through an ambitious programme of in-country training workshops, genuine fieldwork experience, and study visits to Edinburgh and London. Two other projects in Nepal have been funded by the Darwin Initiative, covering other aspects of biodiversity assessment.