The 2nd Asia Regional Conference of the Society for Conservation Biology - Asia Section

August 7-10, 2012, JN Tata Auditorium, IISc Campus, Bengaluru (Bangalore), India

This international conference is being organized in India to highlight the urgency of biodiversity conservation in Asia ahead of the 11th Conference of the Parties (CoP) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be held in India in October 2012. Biodiversity Asia 2012 will bring together researchers, policy makers, managers, students, teachers, NGOs, activists, and others working towards the conservation of Asia's biodiversity.

Biodiversity Asia 2012 will include important updates on conservation research in Asia in lectures, plenary sessions, symposia and poster sessions by leading scientists and students. Biodiversity Asia 2012 will also contribute to capacity-building in Asia by including practical workshops and short-courses for students and practitioners.

Our goal is to have every country in Asia represented, and to showcase the advances made in research and conservation of Asia's rich biodiversity. The conference, in addition to organizing cutting-edge symposiums, will feature skill-building workshops for students. In addition, we plan to have public talks and exhibitions to take the conservation message to the wider public, so together we can work towards reversing biodiversity decline as the world rapidly changes.

The conference is being co-organized by organizations such as Society for Conservation Biology-Asia Section, (SCB-Asia), Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and several other institutions with the Secretariat housed at ATREE, Bengaluru, India. We will partner with other institutions in India and other countries in Asia to ensure broad participation. We expect 400-500 people to participate.

The 1st Asian Regional Meeting was held in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2005. The scientific papers from that conference were published as a book "Biodiversity in Asia": and can be downloaded free from the Internet at:
http://www.conbio.org/Sections/Asia/AsianRegionalMtgPapers.cfm