On World Biodiversity Day, celebrated on 22 May, the Biodiversity Foundation highlights that through projects such as the Biodiversia Platform and the Emprendeverde Network, it wants to disseminate knowledge about the state of biodiversity among citizens and encourage their participation in initiatives that favour the conservation of our natural heritage.

In its commitment to environmental conservation, the Biodiversity Foundation carries out numerous projects annually to increase this knowledge through research, and facilitates its dissemination by opening new channels of information to raise the degree of awareness and involvement of society on the loss of biodiversity.

In this sense, the FB is committed to new information technologies, launching initiatives through general social networks and creating new ones, such as the Biodiversia Platform, which offers a good number of information resources to approach knowledge of biodiversity in Spain. From the Biodiversia Platform, the Biodiversity Foundation invites all citizens to participate in its forums and to collaborate in increasing the information available on Spanish natural heritage, contributing new data and their own experiences through its network.

The conservation of biodiversity is essential in a territory like Spain, which has the greatest variety of species in Europe, with 10,000 different plant species, representing 80% of those existing in the European Union, and between 50,000 and 60,000 animal species, which account for more than 50% of those included in the territory of the EU.

All this natural capital guarantees the well-being of society and ensures many of the essential services for our survival, representing a potential source of resources to cover future needs and to generate employment and wealth, through its sustainable use. For all these reasons, the Biodiversity Foundation encourages entrepreneurs and investors to participate in initiatives such as the Emprendeverde Network, a tool that tries to promote new business opportunities and reconversion of existing ones, which contribute to outlining an environmentally friendly economic development model.

In its objective of channelling actions for the conservation and protection of biodiversity, and coinciding with the European Year of Volunteering, the International Year of Forests and the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Ramsar Convention, throughout 2011 the Biodiversity Foundation also develops volunteering programmes to promote the involvement of society in the conservation of wetlands. through the Spanish Wetlands Centre (CEHUM), and the regeneration of forests with land stewardship agreements, to which all citizens are invited to participate.

These projects give continuity to the objectives that the FB set itself in 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, to give a new impetus to awareness in relation to the conservation and sustainable use of the natural environment. During 2010, the Biodiversity Foundation also continued to promote research projects for scientific knowledge on the management of species, habitats and ecosystems.

The result of these efforts is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in Spain, a United Nations initiative that is being developed with the aim of diagnosing the state of our ecosystems and the consequences that their alteration has on the quality of life of the population. Its conclusions, in addition to being of great scientific and informative value, are useful tools for the management of Spanish natural capital.

All these actions for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources also extend to the marine environment. In terms of marine biodiversity, the FB’s commitment to the generation of knowledge continues to be articulated through the LIFE+ INDEMARES project, which addresses the inventory and designation of the marine Natura 2000 Network in Spain, and which is making satisfactory progress in its mission to identify marine areas of high ecological value for their protection.

Likewise, aware of the importance of climate change in the loss of biodiversity, the FB tries to advance in the knowledge of these impacts through a project in the National Parks, whose purpose is to collect meteorological and biological data to measure the environmental effects of global change on a territory and its consequences on the availability of resources in the Spanish Network of National Parks.