Training and Capacity Building for Conservation in Asia: Implementing Target 15 of the GSPC

Volume 3 Number 1 - January 2006

Mark Richardson, Anle Tieu, and Bian Tan

The International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation explicitly states that ‘Botanic gardens have an important role to play in building capacity for the maintenance of biodiversity’ (Section 2.9). This includes building the capacity of their own staff, sharing skills with other gardens and developing training programmes for national and international courses.

The achievement of the targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) will require very considerable capacity building in both training and access to adequate facilities for plant conservation: Target 15. The 2010 Targets for botanic gardens highlight the importance of ‘Appropriate resources and facilities developed to enable botanic gardens in every country of the world to achieve the targets of the International Agenda and the GSPC’ with two sub-targets: ‘Botanic gardens develop programmes to deliver training and capacity building in plant conservation’ and ‘Double the number of trained botanic garden staff working in conservation, research and education’.

Since the publication of the International Agenda botanic gardens have provided not only training but also the appropriate facilities for promoting education and awareness about plant diversity and the recovery and restoration of plant diversity.

A significant aspect of BGCI’s Investing in Nature programme in the Asia region has been the provision of training programmes at an in-country and regional level to increase their capacity for conservation. In doing so, we have sought to provide training relevant to identified priority areas, obtain good regional and local support and provide opportunities for participants to effectively network. The latter has happened both during the courses and often more importantly during the breaks. In developing the training programmes, BGCI has not only sought to involve the botanic gardens community but also other organizations and individuals that are doing work relevant to the training.

An important aspect of all training workshops is that they must address a specific need in improving skills and a measurable outcome. While the provision of information alone can be useful, it is still necessary to give participants guidelines on how to use the information they are being given and fully explain its relevance. This can sometimes result in the repetition of information, but that can often assist in ensuring that the information is understood.

The following three case studies are of training courses that were run to achieve a specific in-country outcome.

Case Study 1: Interpretation in Chinese Botanic Gardens

Botanic gardens are visited by over 200 million people a year which provides a good opportunity to raise public awareness about the importance of plant diversity and the need for its conservation among their visitors. As a part of the Investing in Nature programme, BGCI funded exhibitions to be hosted by different botanic gardens in China, where visitor numbers are rapidly growing as botanic gardens take on the public education role. At the commencement of this programme, a training workshop was held at the Shanghai Botanic Gardens in 2003 to assist botanic garden staff to develop plans for their exhibitions. The exhibitions are intended to highlight the importance of China's botanic gardens, Chinese plants (economically, culturally and aesthetically), links between plants and local communities in China and the threats faced by plant diversity in China by presenting the plant conservation work conducted by the garden. While this provided a good introduction to the subject of interpretation, it was recognised that further training would still be required to ensure that the botanic gardens produced effective exhibitions.

In response to this, another training workshop was organised at the Nanjing Botanic Garden (Mem Sun Yat-Sen) in 2004. The objective of the workshop was to specifically equip the participants to plan and develop an interpretation display for their botanic garden. It was intended to make participants aware that effective interpretation involves the understanding of the target audience, themes and use of evaluation. Based on the results of the workshop evaluation, participants’ expectations of the workshop were met. Most participants felt that they learnt how a botanic garden interpretative display could be produced with a minimal budget and how interpretation could be evaluated. They also thought that botanic gardens were starting to work together to highlight features of botanic gardens to reinforce people’s feelings and concern about plant conservation. They felt that the workshop was an opportunity for interflow and cooperation with other botanic gardens and to discuss how to better implement education programmes at their garden.

The workshop was a good opportunity for experience-sharing amongst botanic gardens staff and provided a stimulus to encourage botanic gardens to apply for exhibition funding.

The workshop was facilitated by staff from local gardens who shared their skills and experience. Ms Idy Wong and Sharon Chow, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, Hong Kong led the lively and interactive training at the workshop. Dr Jin Xiaobai (Bejing Botanical Garden) and Ms Li Mei (Nanjing Botanical Garden) provided case studies of interpretation projects from their gardens.

The thirty people from 18 Chinese botanic gardens who attended the workshop enjoyed the presentations, group activities and discussions. Through the hands-on exercises, many participants commented that they had gained a better understanding of interpretation principles and how these can be incorporated into their work at their garden. As a result of the workshop, there was also a noticeable improvement in the exhibition applications. The exhibitions produced after the workshop by the participants featured more cohesive themes and incorporated interactive activities which conveyed more effectively the plant conservation message. For example the Beijing Teaching Botanic Garden’s exhibition on the Plants - the protector of the environment included hands-on and sensory activities demonstrating the environmental functions of plants such as noise reduction, humidity control and pollution control. An evaluation of the exhibition conducted by the garden revealed that “80% of visitors could say that plants are ornamental, can be salt and alkaline resistant, conserve and purify water, reduce noise and be used to monitor changes in the environment”.

Case Study 2: Teacher training in Indonesian Botanic Gardens

Building on the important and recognised education role for botanic gardens, effective interpretation is important as highlighted by the success of pubic exhibitions. Equally important is training for school teachers who use botanic garden visits in their teaching programmes.

The Investing in Nature programme in Indonesia has included several training courses to assist school teachers to make effective use of botanic gardens in Indonesia. The aims of such courses are to encourage teachers of nearby schools to use the gardens as outdoor classrooms for students, and to foster closer ties between the teachers and botanic gardens staff, thereby paving the way for future garden-school collaborations. These programmes have a multiplier effect in that the teachers who are trained by garden staff will teach many classes during their career.

The course held in 2005 at the Bogor Botanic Gardens, Java, involved 43 biology teachers from 6 of the subdistricts in the immediate Bogor area. They included equal representation from private and government schools, and elementary and junior high schools. The informal nature of the course sessions and the environmental games in the gardens helped the teachers network and interact with each other and the staff of the garden and several NGOs. The latter included organizations such as Rimbawan Muda Indonesia, a well-established organisation focusing on children’s environmental education, who gave a session on children’s games, and Klub Indonesia Hijau, an organisation focusing on biodiversity conservation, who gave instruction on bird watching during the garden tour. The International Agenda encourages networking at all levels to achieve their goals in maintaining plant diversity and ensuring sustainable living (Section 2.19).

Almost all of the teachers had previously visited the Bogor Botanic Gardens with their students, but the great majority had no clear idea of the functions of botanic gardens and their roles in conservation and education. The course not only imparted information and facts to the teachers, but gave them direct experience in how to show the gardens and collections to their students.

Similar teacher training courses held at another Indonesian garden, the Cibodas Botanic Gardens, have greatly increased school participation in the Pepeling Programme (children’s environmental education) run by the Cibodas Botanic Gardens staff. The first course at Cibodas was held in 2003. Before the Teacher Training Courses were conducted, 220 students from 22 schools participated in the Pepeling Programme in 2002. In 2003, 470 students from 47 schools participated in the same programme and in 2004, 1,280 students from 128 schools participated in the same programme! Another tangible benefit of this improved teacher-botanic garden relationship was the conducting of school outreach by staff of the Cibodas Botanic Gardens in 2005. Three elementary schools in the surrounding regencies were visited, and the schoolchildren were introduced to the importance of plants and participated in planting trees in their school compounds.

In a written survey at the end of the course, all the participants indicated that they had benefited from the course and desired continuation and follow-up meetings or courses in the future. All expressed the need for more cooperation between schools, teachers, botanic gardens and other stakeholders. They noted that two of the biggest problems facing the teachers are: the lack of motivation and support for environmental programmes on the part of the government education departments and that Indonesian society has a deeply-ingrained culture of not caring for the environment and having a minimal awareness of the environment.

Courses such as these run at the Bogor and Cibodas Botanic Gardens are providing teachers with the skills and facilities for engaging students who will become the future environmental stewards and decision makers regarding matters of the environment and education in Indonesia.

Case Study 3: Translocation by Indian Botanic Gardens

In India, BGCI has, as a part of the Investing in Nature programme, been offering small grants to botanic gardens to assist them develop practical conservation activities as identified in the International Agenda (Sections 2.4-2.6). Applicants undertaking ex situ conservation were also requested to look at possible translocation (reintroduction) projects on threatened plants. This work supports the (GSPC Target 8) which includes a target of ’10 per cent of them [threatened plant species] included in recovery and restoration programmes’.

To complement this work, an especially focused workshop entitled Plant Translocation – enriching India’s flora by returning rare plants to nature was held in Pune in September, 2005. The purpose of the workshop was to provide support for those botanic gardens planning to carry out plant translocations, enable them to make best use of their research and horticultural facilities for effective plant restoration.

To focus the content of the workshop, a text prepared by the Australian Network for Plant Conservation, Guidelines for the Translocation of Threatened Plants in Australia (Vallee, 2004) was used. Three of the authors, Tricia Hogbin, Leonie Monks and Maurizio Rossetto also agreed to be presenters. In addition, several presentations on Indian translocation projects were given.

In addition to the presentations, the workshop also included more intensive sessions looking at the translocation plans for six species included in the small grants projects and proposed for translocation. These not only assisted the development of the plans but also highlighted the vast differences that exist between different projects.

Twenty people from 15 different Indian organisations attended, representing government botanic gardens, community botanic gardens, universities, forestry institutes and NGO’s. Participants commended the very focused nature of the workshop and its immediate usefulness in terms of the work they were doing or proposing. One of the species identified for translocation was Dipterocarpus bourdillonii, a critcally endangered tree species growing in southern India. Discussions held during the workshop not only assisted in reviewing the work that had been done to date, but also identified the opportunity for another of the organisations that attended the workshop to provide financial support for its implementation.

The workshop also provided a good opportunity to test whether guidelines that had been primarily prepared for use in another country were readily applicable to the situation in India. In general, it was felt that they were, but had benefited greatly from the addition of the Indian case studies.

References

Vallee, L., Hogbin, T., Monks, L. Makinson, B., Matthes, M. and Rossetto, M., 2004. Guidelines for the translocation of threatened plants in Australia 2nd Edn. Australian Network for Plant Conservation, Canberra, Australia.

Botanic Garden Networks in Asia

Welcome to BGCI China

BGCI and its office in China are involved in several projects including the conservation of threatened plant species, increasing the effectiveness of plant conservation activities, and enhancing environmental education and public awareness.