China-Taipei
China-Taipei is a full member National Committee.
The national committee for DIVERSITAS in Taiwan was established on October 16th, 1999. The committee now has 17 members from different disciplines and institutions related to biodiversity. The committee members will be reformed every three years. The current Chairman is Professor Chang-Hung Chou, and the Executive Secretary is Professor Kwang-Tsao Shao.
Although Taiwan could not sign and join the CBD, a governmental “Biodiversity Action Plan” was ratified by Executive Yuan of Taiwan Government on August 15th, 2001. The National Council of Sustainable Development, Executive Yuan has also set up a series of tasks that need host and affiliated agencies to promote and carry out within a certain period of time. These tasks include:
1. Strengthening the study, conservation, utilization, and fair sharing of biodiversity
2. Strengthening the management of biodiversity
3. Encouraging the cooperation of partnership to facilitate biodiversity work
The National Science Council (NSC) and the Council of Agriculture (COA) of Taiwan are the two major sponsor agencies for biodiversity researches in Taiwan. Hundreds of projects were granted each year. A section of Biodiversity was also established in the Life Science Department of NSC in 2001 and a special fund was given to carry out National Biodiversity Promotion Research Project. Despite individual research projects, the major achievement came from several team projects, including an established Taiwan biodiversity network (TaiBNET) (http://taibnet.sinica.edu.tw) which cataloged more than 52,000 native species and Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF), a nation portal for GBIF (http://taibif.org.tw) was also established in 2004 and is now becoming a good data provider of GBIF. Long-term ecological studies on 5 terrestrial and 1 marine sites were sponsored by the NSC for various years. The Ministry of Education (MOE) also sponsored the Biodiversity Educational Promotion Program in order to improve the teaching quality in different universities since 2003. COA is the major sponsor agency for studies on sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity or agricultural, forestry, and fishery resources. Around 10 million USD is granted annually by COA.
Since 2007, the National Committee of DIVERSITAS / Taiwan has held two international symposium on biodiversity and human well-beings. Several additional local sysmposium or workshops were held as well. The committee members are actively involved in biodiversity conservation programs in order to protect important organisms including plants, animals and fishes as well.
Contacts
Chang-Hung Chou, Chairman, Research Center for Biodiversity, China Medical Universit, Taichung, choumasa@mail.cmu.edu.tw
Kwang-Shao Tsao, Executive Secretary, Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Taipei, zoskt@gate.sinica.edu.tw
