This year, the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica (INBio) celebrates its 20th anniversary of its foundation in 1989. Among its main achievements are the Prince of Asturias Scientific and Technical Research Award in 1995 and more recently the inauguration of the Korea-Costa Rica Biodiversity Research Center.
The National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica (INBio, in Spanish) has become one of the greatest components in the civil society and has propelled numerous projects where the information about biodiversity is used to benefit the communities and the conservation cause. INBio is a non-profit private organization, declared of public interest that generates scientific knowledge about the country’s biological diversity. This information is placed properly to be reached by the society in order to promote sustainability and quality life improvement.
Likewise, INBio has been developed the Bio-prospecting. This initiative seeks sustainable uses and the commercial application of biodiversity resources. INBio has been a pioneer institution in establishing research agreements to study chemical substances, genes, etc., present in plants, insects, marine organisms and microorganisms, which may be utilized by the pharmaceutical, medical, biotechnology, cosmetics, food and agricultural industries.
In education, it created INBio Editorial and INBioParque. INBioparque was inaugurated in the year 2000 and it is visited by more than 150,000 people a year. Among its action areas there is an elaboration of an inventory of all insect species, plants and fungi that live in the country. This information is also available for general public in www.inbio.ac.cr
Actually, INBio counts with a collection of more than 3,500,000 species in which 1,250,000 have been identified. It represents 27,667 species.
Although INBio is a national initiative in terms of its sphere of action, it has also become part of an international effort aimed at integrating conservation and development. The application of scientific knowledge on biodiversity to economic activities such as ecotourism, medicine and agriculture, or the development of mechanisms for the charging and payment of environmental services, exemplify this integration effort and form part of the activities that attract the attention of the international community.
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