UNESCO-led biodiversity travelling exhibition shows how Biodiversity is Life. Biodiversity is our life

• © Montevideo Office

UNESCO, in collaboration with its UN partners including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Environment Facility and UNEP has created a travelling exhibition as a contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB).

The exhibition aims to convey how biodiversity is vital for human well-being, what is causing its loss and how the international community is working to conserve it. Download the exhibition, read more about the content of the exhibition in the UNESCO science newsletter A World of Science, and discover how and where it is being circulated.

Where has the exhibition been circulated?

Through a consortium of both public and private partners and networks, both the full interactive exhibition and an abridged poster version are being circulated throughout the world. Following it’s unveiling at the UNESCO launch of the International Year of Biodiversity on 21 January 2010 in Paris, the bilingual English-French version travelled to the 11th Special Session of the UNEP Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum in Bali, Indonesia in February 2010. This version is accompanying some of the major IYB partner events throughout the year, including the Farnborough Air Show in July 2010 in the UK courtesy of the aviation company Airbus, the exhibition’s main sponsor in the business sector. Farnborough attracts over 150 000 visitors and over 1300 trade exhibitors and is the largest air show of its kind in the world.

Airbus also sponsored the Spanish version of the exhibition which was inaugurated at another IYB partner event, the Fourth Assembly of the Global Environment Facility in Punte del Este, Uruguay in May. This version continues its tour of Latin America, starting in Chile.

An abridged printed poster version (18 thematic posters and 1 title/partners poster) of the exhibition (225 copies) in French/English and French/Spanish was produced with the financial and substantive support of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MAEE) and is being distributed by the MAEE and UNESCO. To date (July 2010), the poster exhibition has been sent to 23 countries in Africa, 8 Arab States, 18 countries in Asia and the Pacific, 26 countries in Europe and North America and 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, totalling 173 exhibition poster sets in 92 different countries.

The exhibition has also been translated into Portuguese and Korean and local copies of the exhibition produced and circulated in Brazil and Korea.

Mayangna Case study, Nicaragua

To illustrate the exhibition theme How does biodiversity interact with the world’s cultures?, with a specific case study, a set of six free-standing panels on the Mayangna people of Nicaragua were produced in English, French, Spanish and the Mayangna language. The panels were presented at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in the UN in New York in April 2010, and will be exhibited in Managua, Nicaragua on the occasion of the national launch of the book ‘Conocimientos del Pueblo Mayangna sobre la Convivencia del Hombre y la Naturaleza’.

Related links:
:: LINKS website
:: IYB Travelling Exhibition
:: Download the panels
:: A World of Science, April-June 2010

• Source:UNESCO SC
• 23-07-2010

• © UNEP -