2024-07-06 23:31:55
The Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, provided more than 57 billion pesos for the construction of the new building of the Colombian National Herbarium.
“Our motivation to pay this historic debt came from two sources: a crisis that generated a very powerful call from the university community and the common purpose of holding COP16 in Colombia. This is to make Peace with Nature, because it is not coherent that a country that takes on the challenge of hosting the most important discussion on biodiversity on the planet loses its center of knowledge,” said the minister.
These resources come from the Fund for Life, a financial mechanism created by the environmental portfolio. in order to enhance the management of the sector, the protection, recovery, use and knowledge of biodiversity.The National Herbarium is the place where plant collections of almost 100 years are kept.therefore, in the year of COP16 we will be able to move forward so that these collections are not lost and we can strengthen global scientific research,” reiterated Muhamad.
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This important knowledge center has 630,000 specimens and is the main place for documenting plant diversity.lichens and fungi of Colombia. It also represents the biological and biocultural memory of the country, documenting this diversity and its relationships with human groups for almost a century.
“The Herbarium is a priority not only for the university, but for the country and the world.“The history of the herbarium is the history of flora and ecosystems in Colombia. We preserve a fundamental part of nature that has developed since before independence,” said Leopoldo Múnera, rector of the National University of Colombia.
Gonzalo Andrade, director of the Institute of Natural Sciences, said that “the project contributes to Sustainable Development Goal number nine within the goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework to ensure that the best data are available. Thank you for the support you gave us in developing the projects we presented to the Fund for Life. It was not an easy task, but here we are.”
For the construction of this new building, three strategies will be advanced: the first is about the construction of adequate and sufficient physical spaces (4,280 m2) for the preservation and consultation of specimens; the second has to do with improving the capacities of the Institute of Natural Sciences to preserve and manage the heritage in its custody; and the third strategy will manage the mobilization and publication of biodiversity data from the Herbarium collections.
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