The ASEAN region has some of the richest and yet most threatened biodiversity on this Earth. The 500 million inhabitants within the nations of ASEAN continue to rely on this biodiversity for their livelihoods.
Central to the conservation and sustainable use of this biodiversity is the availability of adequate skilled human resource and relevant supporting technological tools.
Taxonomy provides the basic tools to inventorize this biodiversity, thereby providing the necessary access to existing biological information and enabling the generation of new information crucial to the conservation and sustainable use of these resources for national and societal development.Status
ASEANET (The Southeast Asian LOOP of BioNET International - and currently known as the ASEAN Network on Taxonomy) is the ASEAN Regional Network for Taxonomy owned by all 10 ASEAN member countries.
ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) endorsed the formation of ASEANET through the Asean Senior Officials for the Environment (ASOEN) at its meeting in Singapore in September 1998.
In 2003, Department of Agriculture Malaysia proposed the establishment of ASEAN Plant Health Cooperation Network (APHCN) as a “virtual ASEAN PLANTI” at the 5th Meeting of ASEAN EWG-HPM.
The establishment of APHCN was later endorsed at the 25th Meeting of AMAF (ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture & Forestry).
ASEANET was designated the Technical Secretariat of the APHCN and has been tasked to take a leadership role to implement the ASEAN Regional Diagnostics Network (ARDN) as a key activity of the APHCN.
Member countries
All ten ASEAN member countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam
Chairperson:
Ms. Rosmawati Selamat
SPS Capacity Building Program of DAFF, Australia (2005-2010)
ICMPFF (2005) – Training Workshops on Fruit-fly DiagnosticsUS-Department of States – Training Workshop on IAS (2007)
AADCP (2006-2007) and AANZFTA Program (2011-2015)