Education and training in Brazilian botanical gardens: are we achieving GSPC targets?

Abstract

Engage, educate and raise public awareness of the importance of plant diversity is the means through which plant conservation can be achieved. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is a programme to halt the loss of plant diversity and recognize botanical gardens as a partners. This paper investigates the implementation of targets 14 and 15 GSPC in Brazilian botanic gardens specially in education and awareness about plant diversity and trained people. A survey was carried out on the institutional websites of 21 gardens registered in the National System of Botanical Gardens Registration to identify actions that follow the guidelines of these two targets. Websites outdated, difficult access and lack online resources for the public shows us that internet tools are poorly used to divulgation. The target 14's activities performed in most gardens are educational visits and environmental interpretation and explore collections in situ and ex situ from representative species of regional flora. Trained people is held in all gardens but some stand out as important research centers and graduate programs. Despite the efforts Brazilian botanical gardens need improve the public communication and develop strategies to measure the targets progress.

An Overview of Environmental Education for Millennial Visitors in Indonesian Botanic Gardens

“…All Gardens produce educational material to inform visitors. This material may be available on the website as itineraries, handouts or didactic activities, as also observed by Cerati (2018). The gardens also support students and teachers with a library and videos as a complement to educational visits, thus reinforcing didactics and the view that education in botanical gardens is an instrument of support to complement formal education.…”

“…Educational activities available to the public and reported at the website and annual reports were identified. These activities were classified according to the aims of GSPC Target 14 underlining education and Target 15 for capacity building (Cerati, 2018). Then all activities were classified into manual and digital version.…”

“…As regards GSPC Target 14, educational visits are held in all Gardens and usually explore living collections. Visits to living collection is indeed favorable to interaction of society with the garden (Cerati, 2018).…”

“…Since engagement and education is the means through which plant conservation targets can be achieved to raise public awareness of the importance of plant diversity (Wyse-Jackson & Sutherland, 2000;Cerati et al, 2018), botanic gardens is necessarily to improve their education program. The developing roles of botanic gardens in biodiversity conservation, environmental education and sustainable development provide great opportunities and responsibilities for institutions throughout the world (Wyse-Jackson & Sutherland, 2000).…”

Linking Ecotourism in Management of Botanic Garden: Social Innovation of Purwodadi BG of East Java, Indonesia

“…Involving, educating, and raising public awareness about the importance of plant diversity are ways in which plant conservation can be achieved. Therefore, many botanical garden managers need to improve mass communication and develop strategies to measure the progress of targets [10].…”