Indonesia Hosts ATBC 2010

The tenth annual conference of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation was held in Bali from July 19 to 23 with the theme "Tropical Biodiversity: Surviving the food, energy and climate crisis." Plenary speakers that discussed  the many facets of biodiversity include Umar Anggara Jenie, Indonesian National Bioethics Commission (KBN); Michael Donoghue of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University; Daniel Murdiyarso of the Center for International Forestry Research; Charlie Veron of the Australian Institute of Marine Science; and Frans Bongers, ATBC President and Professor Tropical Forest Ecology, Wageningen University. The five-day event was organized by the Research Center for Biology of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Indonesia.

According to Daniel Murdiyarso, the meeting was timely because dramatic loss and degradation of biological diversity is currently being experienced, and is likely to worsen by the adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change which takes place in a gradual trend. A collective action to mitigate the possible effects should be started soonest.

For more information on the event and the declaration visit http://atbc2010.org/. For news on biotechnology in Indonesia, contact Dewi Suryani of the Indonesian Biotechnology Information Center at catleyavanda@gmail.com