Internet Information on Species Sought

March 13, 2001

The first meeting of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) took place in Montreal where 14 countries joined and collectively pledged more than $2.5 million to support the organization's first year of operation. The facility is an open-ended body in which any interested country may participate. Its goal is to provide world wide access, via the Internet, to information about the known 1.8 million species of organisms that inhabit the earth.

Data about the world's biodiversity resources are concentrated mostly in developed countries and not easily accessible especially to the developing countries from which much of the data originated. The GBIF in the coming years wants to make access to these data much easier.

GBIF became operational on March 1. The first meeting of its governing board was held in Montreal from Friday-Sunday. Fifty-five delegates from 29 countries, economies and international organizations agreed on the final steps to make GBIF fully operational and accessible to the public. The board elected Dr. Christoph Haeuser from Germany as its chairperson and Dr. Kunio Iwatsuki from Japan as vice chairperson.

"GBIF will provide an unparalleled source of biodiversity information for scientists, natural resource managers, policymakers and the general public," said Haeuser. "They will be able to use this facility from anywhere in the world to access geographical, ecological, genetic and taxonomic information on the approximately three billion specimens located in the world's natural history collections. We would like to add that a great percentage of these specimens were collected in other countries, notably developing countries."

Iwatsuki said, "GBIF will provide a treasure trove of data that will aid in advancing education and scientific research in areas such as conservation, biology, agriculture and biomedicine. It will help serve economic and social interests, providing a basis from which the knowledge of the natural world can grow rapidly and be shared in a manner that avoids duplication of effort and expenditure."

In the months ahead, the members of the GBIF governing board will select an executive secretary as well as the country to host the GBIF secretariat. Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain have already submitted bids to host the secretariat. The second meeting of the governing board will take place in Bonn, Germany, June 15-17 where the country to host the secretariat will be selected.