Report

In March 2020, museums and cultural organizations across the world closed their doors due to Coronavirus. Now, almost half a year later, many institutions are in the early phases of reopening.
In order to initiate a successful reopening, digital tools and solutions will be a critical component to addressing new challenges around admissions, the visitor journey, and recovering visitors and revenue.

This report brings together the most current knowledge of soil life and how it supports nature and humanity. More than 300 scientists contributed to the report, which provides an overview of soil biodiversity, its contribution to supporting ecosystems and communities, global and regional trends, and ways to protect soil biodiversity and leverage it for a sustainable future. The key messages from the report are: 

In December 2020 the IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 found that climate change is now the biggest threat to natural World Heritage globally. This report, IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3, builds on three cycles of Conservation Outlook Assessments undertaken since 2014. It presents the main results for 2020, but also some longer-term trends based on a comparison of three data sets now available.

Ten years ago the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria embarked on an ambitious project to collect, treat and distribute storm water from the catchment within and around the botanic garden. The infrastructure of wetlands filtration, a sophisticated water treatment centre and landscaping to complement and encourage improvements in water quality enhanced our international reputation in integrated water management.

This report describes the first phase of an examination of some of the nation’s needs for
native plant seeds (a shorthand term to include all forms of native propagative plant material)
and of the capacity to meet those needs. Across the United States, millions of acres of land have
been so disturbed by human activities or severe climate events that significant portions of their
native plant communities have been lost and their ecosystems have been seriously compromised.

If you work remotely (or supervise people who do) and spend much of your day in videoconferences, this report was written for you. It may be most relevant to individuals working at nonprofits and foundations, colleges and universities, and government agencies at all levels, because those are the sectors most represented in our research and those are the “unmuted” voices speaking most often here.

Quite simply, “what does public data reveal about the most glaring challenges impacting Black, Hispanic and Indigenous communities in the United States?” Thereafter, “how do we collectively galvanize policy and resources to ameliorate those issues in an iterative and measurable process?”
Finding the answers to these critical questions was the guiding principle in commissioning this report and the coalescing a stellar group of conscious researchers and experts to complete the work herein. 

In 2018, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank (MARSB) and the University of Maryland
Extension conducted an internet survey of the native plant and seed user community throughout
the Eastern United States. The authors developed an extensive list of native plant users. The
survey was sent to names on that list, and those receiving the survey were encouraged to send it
on to other users for their input. We asked questions about the commercial availability of native

Universities and other higher education institutions have a critical role in helping
society achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their research,
learning and teaching, campus operations and leadership. This guide focuses on one
of the most important ways they can contribute, which is to harness their learning
and teaching functions to provide “Education for the SDGs (ESDGs)”, that will help
learners develop the necessary knowledge, skills and mindsets.

The adoption of a Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) in 2002 and its subsequent renewal in 2010 were significant milestones for the Convention on Biological Diversity. Not only did this strategy, its objectives and targets provide a valuable framework to guide plant conservation worldwide, it also played a critical role in mobilizing the plant and botanical community at global and national levels to develop new priority plant conservation actions.