The Global Canopy Programme evolved from an ESF / NSF funded International Canopy Science Workshop in Oxford, held in November 1999. As part of the Workshop's outcomes, a template for the GCP was produced by 29 international experts from 10 countries. They concluded that by working together, canopy researchers would be able to leverage more funding for a major collaborative Natural Science project to investigate "nature's last biotic frontier". They called for significant new funding on the scale of large Physical science projects (US$20-50 million) to undertake this pioneering task. Click the link to download a copy of the workshop report.