Abstracts, XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy) , 9-15

XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy), 9-15 September 2013
Botany at the heart of the legislation for the conservation
FENNANE M.
Université Mohammed 5 Agdal, Institut Scientifique, Rabat, Morocco. E-mail: fennane@israbat.ac.ma; fennane@yahoo.com
The conservation of biodiversity is a global challenge and a big human responsibility to
bequeath to future generations a less disturbed natural environment possible.
To achieve this objective, legislative tools become compulsory in order to review, complete and
update the existing exploitation rules, to better protect and conserve species and habitats.
The general situation becomes more and more complicated, as economic issues and conflicts of
human population interests affected by these actions are often very important.
In the past, botanists devoted their entire time to study plants. They have now other new responsibilities
to assume beside lawmakers and biodiversity managers. Their role is essential to ensure
that decisions made contribute as best as possible for species preservation and maintain ecological
balances.
Actions for biodiversity conservation are practiced at different scales (international, national
and local), from different angles (ecosystem approaches or by habitats, by species, genes ...) and
often involve many stakeholders (managers or decision makers, users, lawmakers, botanists,
NGOs ...). Tasks are difficult and stakes are important. Our contribution in this symposium is a
good illustration for these issues.
38