The Science and Technology Foundation - FCT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia is the Portuguese governmental agency for non-applied research funding and is integrated in the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Its mission is mainly to manage, evaluate and fund research in all the fields of Science. The funding of research is done mainly by:

• Funding competitive proposals presented by institutions, research groups and individuals, on the basis of independent evaluations of merit, funding at the moment.
• 1 900 research projects in all fields of science, including biodiversity research.
• Funding research and managing programmes in marine science including marine biodiversity.
• Funding and managing of programmes for research on biodiversity conservation.
• Funding through co-operation agreements and other forms of partnerships with universities and other public and private research institutions in a total of 350 institutions in all scientific fields including several institutions totally or partially dedicated to biodiversity research.
• Funding for research fellowships in all fields of research: more than 4 000 research fellowships for Masters, PhD and Post-doctoral studies.

FCT also provides the institutional framework for the Research Councils that were recently created in Portugal and started recently to discuss priorities for research. The Research Council for Environment and Marine Sciences will be in the future the main responsible for setting up priorities and propose specific research programs in Biodiversity research.

FCT is integrating the Portuguese Platform for Biodiversity that will bring together researcher from all major institutions that deal with biodiversity, NGOs, conservation practitioner and representatives of the Institute of Nature Conservation (Ministry of Environment). It has also offered support for the EPBRS secretariat.

In 2002 FCT had an overall budget of 194.6 million euros and it spends annually between 2 and 4 million euros in research projects dealing directly with Biodiversity.