Italian and international networks
The Padua Botanical Garden, long centrally placed in a dense network of international relations, is among the premier organizations actively dedicated to safeguarding the world’s plantlife heritage.
BGCI - Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Founded in 1987 under the aegis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), BGCI is an international organization that operates in over 100 countries, actively involved in safeguarding plant biodiversity, supporting the development of international agreements like the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), promoting the spread of good practices and conventions, organizing international congresses and meetings, developing shared programmes for plant conservation, as well as keeping up-to-the-minute databases on botanical gardens (GardenSearch) and on living plants, seeds and tissue collections (PlantSearch).
European Botanic Gardens Consortium
BGCI operates in Europe through the European Botanic Gardens Consortium (EBGC), established in 1994, which brings together all the representatives from national networks of European botanical gardens. EBGC organizes conferences periodically, promotes international initiatives, like the International Plant Exchange Network (IPEN), facilitates the exchange of information between national networks and European coordination, stimulating common projects, the spread of standards and good practices, and maintenance of databases. The Consortium has developed and published an Action Plan for the botanical gardens of the European Union — an important contribution to initiatives such as Biodiversity Strategy, the European Plant Conservation Strategy and the International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation.
RIBeS - Rete Italiana Banche del Germoplasma
Since 2005 the Padua Botanical Garden has been a member of the national network for conservation ex situ of Italian spontaneous flora. In keeping with the principles of the Convention on Biodiversity (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), a joint effort is being made by botanical gardens in Europe and worldwide to preserve the germplasm of endangered plants, thereby ensuring the maintenance of biodiversity.