Regional Aspects

Under a regional project, it is important to demonstrate increased regional capacity and/or knowledge, and not just increased national capacity. Different questions can be asked regarding this issue:

Why a regional project and not just a series of national projects to support botanical institutions?

Has the project increased the voice of botany at a regional level?

Is the regional view now stronger at continental or international forums?

Has regional expertise been effectively utilised?

Most countries have looked at the national benefits of project activities, not at regional benefits or possibilities. The regional potential has not been fully realised. Expertise has mostly been used at a bilateral level.

Building regional strength could involve the following:

Protocols for data exchange between countries and institutions

Production of a regional Red Data List

Synthesis of data at a regional level

Mentoring within the region

Namibia and South Africa are advanced in signing a bilateral agreement for data exchange. This will allow Namibia to access data held at the NBI (now SANBI) and vice versa.

The following recommendations were made:

1. Resources must be made available under the present project for mentoring, using expertise available within the region. This may take the form of:

A specialist in a particular priority group visiting other herbaria to help with identifications for periods of a few weeks each (roving specialist).

A bilateral arrangement for a particular specialist to visit an institution to support, advise or carry out informal training on a specified topic.

Research or specialist staff at a participating institution visiting another regional institution for a period of a few weeks to increase their knowledge or exposure.

Regional specialists being funded to provide peer review, scientific editing, and specialist technical advice on request. This would probably include country visits.

2. Strong efforts should be made to produce regional outputs, such as the regional Red Data List, checklists of trans-boundary areas, regional distribution maps, regional inventories of useful plants, and perhaps regional checklists. Some of these may be problematic, given the differing status of progress in national databasing.

3. The value of regional cooperation in the botanical field, along with the benefits of regional networking, should be publicised.

4. Namibia and South Africa should finalise their bilateral data-sharing agreement; this should be regarded as a basis for a regional protocol.

5. As SABONET has only three or four Steering Committee meetings left before the planned end of the project, proposals submitted to these meetings need to be well planned. Peer review of proposals from within the region may also help consolidate project management training. Care must be taken that such a review process is simple to ensure that institutions are not deterred from submitting proposals. A pro forma proposal could be developed by the Secretariat to ensure that the Steering Committee has all the necessary information to make a decision.

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