“Your 25th birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on your own life. It is also a good moment for institutions to do it as they are mature enough to assess their trajectory and decide their future actions”, explained Professor Carles Gràcia, from the Department of Ecology of the UB, in the lecture he pronounced to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the CREAF.

The event entitled “Twenty-Five Years of Research on Ecology” took place on Friday 25 October, in the Sala Prat de la Riba at IEC. The personalities who participate in the event were Joandomènec Ros, professor of Ecology of the UB and president of IEC; Josep Enric Llebot, secretary general for Environment and Sustainability of the Department of Territory and Sustainability of the Government of Catalonia; Lluís Tort, vice-rector for Strategic Projects and Planification of the UAB; Javier Retana, director of CREAF and Lluís Calvo, Institutional Coordinator of CSIC in Catalonia.

In the lecture entitled “Ecologia: una ciència universal?”, Dr García also remembered the origins of CREAF and its role in promoting the research on ecology and forestry applications in Catalonia. "As all of you know —he stressed—, CREAF's successful actions throughout these twenty-five years make a long list, and I do not have enough time, nor the ability, to name all of them or the most important ones".

"These twenty-five years —he added— have enabled us to attain important objectives but obviously we must face future challenges; unfortunately, present situation is not as favourable as we wanted”. Gràcia warned also about the risks of the Mediterranean region: “We live in a wonderful region of our planet, birthplace of civilization; however, although current models show that it is one of the most sensitive regions to climate change, our society continues facing away from this problem and other environmental issues that it will have to face next decades".

Dr Carles Gràcia's speech is available on this link.