Earth Day is an annual event celebrated around the world on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. On this day, scientists from the National Institute of Biology took the opportunity to announce the publication of a book illustrating biodiversity and the amazing variety of life forms.
In 1992, the Earth Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro attracting over 30,000 people including more than 100 heads of state, the largest environmental conference ever held. In their final declaration, leaders and representatives of 178 countries recognised the importance of biodiversity and the Convention on Biological Diversity was launched. This political input gave a much-needed push to biodiversity research and nature conservation initiatives. However, today, almost thirty years later, biodiversity is still highly threatened, and many people remain unaware of its importance. To contribute to raising awareness about these issues, scientists at the National Institute of Biology in Slovenia decided to bring biodiversity closer to people by writing a bilingual book of sixty attractive stories from the natural world accompanied with beautiful photos. The importance raising awareness to promote nature conservation is a topic that has been extensively considered during all the interregional BID-REX workshops.
“60 Views of Biodiversity is like a mosquito on an elephant. Nature’s diversity is vast, much bigger even than the elephant. We decided on 60 stories since in 2020 we are celebrating 60 years of biodiversity research at the National Institute of Biology” said one of the three editors, Prof. Dr. Davorin Tome.
The PDF version of this book is fully accessible here
A promotional video (in Slovenian) can be accessed here
Photo Matej Slabe (c)
