Call for Nominations for the Equator Prize 2008

It is our great pleasure to announce the opening of the call for nominations for the Equator Prize 2008: Celebrating Community Success in Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Reduction.

This marks the fourth round of the internationally renowned Equator Prize. Awarded biennially, the Equator Prize recognizes community-based initiatives that demonstrate extraordinary achievement in reducing poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the equatorial belt. Prize winners receive worldwide recognition for their work as well as an opportunity to help shape national and global policy and practice in the field.

Twenty-five community organizations will be honored with the Equator Prize 2008 and US$5,000 each. Five of these communities will receive special recognition and an additional US $15,000. Special recognition will be given in the following categories: one for each region of eligibility (Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean), one to the initiative that best exemplifies community approaches to adapt to climate change, and one to the initiative that best exemplifies the conservation of agricultural biodiversity. The Equator Prize will be presented in October 2008, in Barcelona, Spain, at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. All winners will have the opportunity to showcase their work in the “Poble” Dialogue Space at the Congress.

The Equator Prize 2008 nomination process will be open through May 31, 2008. Details on the criteria for the Prize, information on the award process, and the online nomination system can be accessed through Equator Initiate website .

We encourage you to nominate qualified community initiatives that are active in environmental conservation and sustainable development within the equatorial region. Self-nominations are welcome.

International Conference Announcement

You are warmly invited to participate in the International conference:

Biodiversity Informatics and Climate Change Impacts on Life (Conference website) April 5-6, 2008, at the University of Aarhus, Denmark

Registration deadline: March 21.

Global climate change is becoming the great challenge of our time. A key issue is how the looming climate changes will impact Earth's rich biodiversity. This issue is closely tied up to the basic research question "What determines species diversity", which the Science magazine in 2005 selected as one of 25 key topics that science should focus on. The role of past and present climate as determinants of biodiversity and the potential impacts of future climate on biodiversity are the topics that this conference will focus on. These issues are the kind of complex large-scale problems that are very difficult to study by the traditional experimental approach to science. Instead an informatics approach is necessary, and this conference will provide the best possible insight into results, possibilities, and challenges to biodiversity informatics studies of climate change impacts of life. The conference will run over two days and will present a series of leading scientists in biodiversity informatics studies of climate change impacts and related fields.

About the organisers: DanBIF - Danish Biodiversity Information Facility is the Danish node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (link http://www.gbif.org GBIF). DanBIF hosts a series of international conferences on the application of biodiversity informatics. Last year's conference was entitled Biodiversity Informatics and the Barcode of Life and was highly successful.

Henrik Balslev is professor in biodiversity at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Aarhus (home page). Carsten Rahbek is professor in macroecology at the Institute of Biology, University of Copenhagen and director of the Center for Macroecology (home page). Jens-Christian Svenning is associate professor in macrocology at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Aarhus (home page).