International Union of Biological Sciences

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International Union of Biological Sciences
logo
Seat Paris
founding 1919

place Paris FranceFranceFrance 
president Nils Chr. Stenseth
Website [1]

The International Union of Biological Sciences (IUB, International Union of Biological Sciences) is a non-profit and non-governmental organization that promotes international scientific biology. As a scientific umbrella organization, it was a founding member of the International Science Council .

tasks and goals

The Union has several central tasks:

  • it supports biological science
  • it coordinates research and international cooperation
  • it designs and promotes scientific projects and programs
  • it supports international conferences and the publication of the results of scientific projects.

Networking and cooperation

The association is a founding member of the ICSU and contributes its scientific committees and programs there. The Union works closely with UNESCO . It also has relationships with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). It cooperates with the European Commission and numerous other organizations, authorities and foundations.

organization

The association currently consists of

  • 44 national members, consisting of national science academies, research and science associations,

as well as from

  • 80 scientific members who are themselves international scientific associations, societies or commissions from the most diverse biological disciplines, from aerobiology to zoology (as of March 2008). New scientific members are admitted according to strict guidelines.

The national and scientific members have the task, on the one hand, of identifying promising biological science areas and bringing them to the Union, and on the other hand, to make the Union's programs known in their own country and to stimulate research projects. The Union accepts suggestions from its members, examines them against the international scientific and scientific policy background and develops programs that are decided in the general assembly, which are accredited through international conferences and which are then to be carried out with the help of national or international research funding agencies.

The organs are the executive board and the general assembly.

Board

The executive board consists of: the president, the former president, two deputies, the general secretary, the treasurer and other members of the extended board. The board meets annually. The secretariat with its executive director coordinates the programs and activities. Until 2012, Ralf Reski , chairman of the DNK, of the German National Biology Committee, was elected to the extended board of the IUBS

General meeting

Each full member has one vote in the general assembly. The scientific members are invited to send representatives who give lectures and make programmatic proposals. The general assembly elects the executive board, selects the Union's scientific programs to be implemented from the proposed projects, checks the progress of the scientific programs, works together with other international organizations and decides on the allocation of funds. The general assembly takes place parallel to a scientific conference organized in cooperation with the national union committee of the host country.

German participation

The German member is the German Research Foundation (DFG), which has appointed a German National Committee (DNK) Biology for the two international biological unions (IUBS and International Union of Microbiological Societies , IUMS).

Programs

The scientific programs are chosen by the general assembly from the proposals of the committee for scientific programs according to the statutes of the union. Where necessary and possible, the Union grants start-up funding for individual programs, the further funding of which is negotiated by national or international donors or through agreements with the Union.

Examples of programs

Diversitas , Human Dimensions of Biodiversity , Integrative Climate Change Biology (iCCB), Systematics Agenda , Biological Education (BioED), IUBS Ethics Committee formerly Bioethics , Bionomenclature , Biology and Traditional Knowledge , Biological Consequences of Global Change (BCGC), Darwin200 , Biosystematics , Species 2000 , Genomics and Evolution , Modernizing the codes to meet future needs of scientific communities (BIOCODE), Biology Research and Education Resources in Africa , Reproductive Biology , Aquaculture , Bio-Energy and Towards an Integrative Biology (TAIB) .

Legal status and finances

The association is selfless and has no economic goals. It is financially supported by the following sources:

  • annual membership fees of the full members, as determined every three years in the assembly
  • Grants from UNESCO and other international organizations that support the Union's scientific programs
  • other sources

The annual budget is around € 340,000 (as of 2006). This is used to pay the salaries of a director and a secretary who run the Paris office. All other offices (president, general secretary, treasurer etc.) are honorary offices for which only the direct expenses according to the respective travel expense laws are paid.

history

The association was founded in 1919 and originally the S did not stand for Sciences , but for Societies . In the 1980s she developed numerous scientific programs such as the Decade of the Tropics, bioindicators, biological complexity and biodiversity.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.iubs.org/iubs/history.html
  2. ↑ DNK board
  3. ↑ German biologists firmly integrated into the international umbrella organization , DNK press release , October 20, 2009
  4. ↑ Article “German biologists firmly integrated into the international umbrella organization” on the “Cooperation International” website of the International Office at the German Aerospace Center on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research