The European Commission (EC) has financed with euro 6 million (US.14 million) the putting up of an Asean Center for Biodiversity (ACB) which aims to boost environmental conservation in the Asean and arrest rapid biodiversity loss over a three-to-five-year program.
The ACB, which is based in the Philippines at Los Baños, Laguna, is an international organization which is EC’s response to calls of the World Summit on Sustainable Development to help cut biodiversity loss by 2010.
Asean member countries are expected to provide a euro 1.3 million (.55 million) contribution to the fund and add another euro 5 million (.9 million) budget to meet the targetted euro 20 million (.8 million) for the project.
The EC is concerned that of the 17 mega diverse countries in the world, three are in the Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations).
This includes the Philippines which has 50,000 identified animal and plant species 65 percent of which is not found any other part of the world.
"The variety of Asean biodiversity is astonishing. A single small tropical forest patch in Asean, covering just a couple of hundreds of hectares may support more bird and mammal species than occur in the whole of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany combined. More new species are described every year in the Philippines than in any other country in the world," the EC noted.
The two other Asean mega diverse countries are Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia which while covering only 1.3 percent of the earth’s land surface has 25 percent or more of the world’s fish species.
Other notable country in the Asean is Brunei which despite its smallness has 480 species of butterflies while the entire Europe only has a total of 440 butterfly species. Moreover, Indochina, continental South East Asia is the world’s host for wild and domestic ceral and fruit species.
"The true value of this biological diversity defies conventional methods of quantification. The region’s ecosystems provide services that range from maintenance of global biogeochemical cycles, to sources of export revenue, and sources of food and income for the poor," EC said.
This program is a follow-up to the EC-funded Asean Regional Center for Biodiversity Conservation which started in 1999 and ended in December 2004 and received an EC grant of euro 9.4 million (.19 million)
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