Millennium Seed Bank Project
The Wellcome Trust Millennium Building at Wakehurst Place
The Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP) was conceived according to the spirit of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (see BACKGROUND) and today, five years after its International Programme began, the Project is a global conservation network, comprising c. 20 partner countries and over 40 partner institutions. With emphasis on conservation practice rather than theory, the MSBP network is actively delivering the targets of the CBD’s Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). Project outputs include: national checklists (Target 1); species conservation assessments (Target 2); protocols for plant conservation and sustainable use (Target 3); information on threatened plants in situ (Target 7); accessible ex situ collections of threatened species (Target 8); conservation of socio-economically valuable species (Target 9); protocols towards sustainable management of plants and their products that support rural livelihoods (Targets 12 and 13); educational materials that raise public awareness about conservation (Target 14); and capacity building through technology transfer and training (Targets 15 and 16). In many partner countries the MSBP is the leading initiative implementing the targets of the GSPC, and this is reflected in the ACHIEVEMENTS and FUTURE PLANS sections.