The two-way meeting, which was conducted at the Best Western plus Olives Hotel in Sofia between 12th and 14th of March, 2024, called on government administration representatives and scientists from Bulgaria and Romania to reach agreement on the actions for building capacity for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The main priorities, methods of action, and possibilities of cooperation with IPBES were presented.
Prof. Pavel Stoev, Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia (NMNHS) took part in the initiative and shared information on established practices and scientific projects the museum is working on. Assoc. Prof Rostislav Bekchiev from NMNHS presented results from the testing of a method for monitoring Bulgarian pollinators, as well as the SPRING project. Dr Salza Palpurina presented the museum’s process of “unlocking biodiversity data” — from the digitisation of scientific collections to their publication in GBIF, the biggest and most global open-access biodiversity data platform.
The participants in the meeting visited NMNHS and got to see the expositions and history of the oldest museum in the country, as well as the processes of digitisation of the scientific collections, presented by Prof Zlatozar Boev and Dr Violeta Evtimova.
The seminar was administered by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, with organiser Mr Axel Paulsch from the Institute for Biodiversity Network e.V., and was financed by the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt). Their Bulgarian partners were the Ministry of Environment and Water through the Bulgarian focus centre of IPBES, together with researchers from the partner team SELINA from the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy, and Geography, the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, and the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The event is a part of the work programme of the European project SELINA, whose main goal is to offer evidence-based solutions for the planning and management of the environment.