Capacity Building

A major focus of our UKOTs programme is capacity building - enabling people and organisations around the world to develop specialist skills and gain experience.

Sharing skills

Among the training activities we undertake are practical workshops, seminars and field trips as well as formal taught courses.

Representatives from St Helena, the Falkland Islands, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands have already participated in the programme of International Diploma courses at Kew. We actively encourage applications for these courses from the UKOTs and may be able to help with securing funding for participation.

Kew's Horticulture and Public Experience Department offers horticultural internships to enable enthusiastic horticulturists to spend 3 months gaining practical experience of different horticultural techniques within the extensive living plant collections in the Gardens.

Kew staff share their specialist skills through a range of projects, including support for the development of plant conservation facilities within Territories, such as a new herbarium in BVI and the botanic garden in Montserrat.

Sharing information

Another aspect of capacity building is sharing any data and information that we generate through our conservation activities, either via publications, electronically or through workshops. We help partners within the UKOTs by providing assistance with identifying and naming plant specimens.

Kew acts as the UK Scientific Authority for Plants under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). We can provide advice for UKOTs organisations on the species listed under CITES and on the scientific information available.

Sharing materials

The Millennium Seed Bank Project makes seed collecting equipment, such as mini seed banks, available to its partners to help to ensure that seed collections are of the highest possible quality. Other project teams assist partners to select and source the most appropriate equipment and materials for botanical activities.

Project under the spotlight: Caribbean Regional GSPC workshop

Representatives from 10 Caribbean countries, including several UKOTs, attended this workshop in Montserrat in 2006. It was organised by RBG Kew in collaboration with the Secretariat of the CBD, Botanic Gardens Conservation International and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and funded by Defra's International Sustainable Development Fund. By bringing together international conservation experts together with regional biodiversity specialists, its objectives were to explore opportunities for implementing the GSPC in the Caribbean.

Find out more about:

Implementing CITES within the UK and UKOTs

UK CITES Management Authority dealing with CITES policy within the UK - Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). This website also provides information on implementing CITES within the EU and the Registered Scientific Institution Scheme.
UK CITES Management Authority dealing with permitting, enforcement and Inspection - Animal Health