Five universities are promoting an interactive platform with information on wild and cultivated plants

The UOC, in collaboration with four other universities (UB, UAB, UAM and ULL), has created a catalogue containing over 1,500 records of wild and cultivated plants in 842 Spanish municipalities. The catalogue, Sharing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (CONECT-e), is an interactive platform for collecting and transmitting traditional knowledge relating to seeds of crops under the threat of extinction, plants, animals, fungi and ecosystems.

“It is a database open to the general public to encourage the sharing of knowledge and to prevent private foundations or companies registering the species and obtaining the selling rights," explains Laura Calvet-Mir, researcher with the UOC research group TURBA Lab. The format of the platform replicates Wikipedia; consequently, anyone wishing to consult or add information can do so by registering as a user.

The project, which is being developed under the umbrella of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), has been awarded funding of 50,000 euros by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. In addition to the universities, the Botanical Institute of Barcelona and the Red de Semillas (Seeds Network), among others, are also participating in the initiative.

Project protected with a Creative Commons licence

The UOC researcher explains that with the Green Revolution, in the sixties, traditional or local varieties were lost (crops which farmers have reproduced for more than a generation or thirty years, in a specific geographical area). For some years now, she points out, there has been an international movement to recover traditional varieties and some agricultural companies have detected that there is a gap in the market.

“What we want with this database is to prevent anyone from registering a traditional variety as their own and having the exclusive right to sell it,” Calvet-Mir points out. The CONECT-e team wants traditional ecological knowledge to be managed as a shared asset where nobody has exclusive control.

For this reason, the information contained in CONECT-e is protected by a Creative Commons licence which allows any user to continue to share and adapt the knowledge they obtain via the platform, provided the source of the information is recognized, and, if it is published again, to do so using the same licence. “This licence helps protect knowledge relating to biodiversity from misappropriation, but does not restrict its use,” Calvet-Mir explains.

A benchmark of knowledge

CONECT-e, which was launched in February, aims to become a benchmark in traditional ecological knowledge. The legislation for the sector acknowledges that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is important for the conservation of biodiversity and the preservation of ecosystems. Therefore, the catalogue could be a very useful tool for designing policies and strategies to combat the effects of climate change or preserve biodiversity.