Australian Biological Resources Study
Issue 24
Australian Biological Resources Study, June 2001
ISSN 0814 B8880
The Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) is an initiative of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) to support the development of the institutional and human capacity in taxonomy required to underpin the CBD's objectives. The CBD has called on all countries to designate a GTI focal point to help in dissemination of information about the GTI to the taxonomic community, as well as to act as a conduit to receive back information to help inform each country's input to the CBD. The Australian Government nominated the Director of ABRS as the Australian GTI focal point. Ian Cresswell has recently returned from Montreal where he was the GTI Programme Officer within the CBD Secretariat, and is well placed to take up this challenge.
To facilitate information exchange in Australia, the Australian GTI focal point would like to use two mechanisms: firstly the provision of information through existing publications in both hard copy and electronic, and secondly the establishment of a GTI list server freely accessible to anyone interested.
There have been several major developments in the GTI over the last year that are worthy of reporting. In May 2000 the Conference of the Parties (COP), the governing body of the CBD, created a steering committee for the GTI, and this met for the first time in December 2000 in Montreal.
In December 2000 a draft programme of work for the GTI was released by the CBD Secretariat for discussion at the March 2001 meeting of the SBSTTA (the Convention's peak scientific advisory body). The draft work programme is available at http://biodiv.org/doc/meeting/sbstta/sbstta-06/official/sbstta-06-10-en.pdf. SBSTTA had called for the work programme to be adopted by all governments, including Australia. The draft programme provides many opportunities for Australian institutions and researchers to be actively involved in bettering our global taxonomic capacity to support biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Australia is well placed both to provide help and to benefit from GTI activities, through the provision of training opportunities and intellectual capital.
ABRS has had a long involvement with the development of the GTI (for example see the Darwin Declaration on the ABRS website: http//anbg.gov.au/abrs). Ian Cresswell recently attended a regional GTI meeting in South Africa to help prepare regional priorities for Africa, and to help inform African taxonomists about the GTI and the Convention. While there, Ian was able to liaise with several long-standing supporters/contributors to ABRS, as well as to learn more of international developments in taxonomy. ABRS would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Government of Sweden who paid for Ian's attendance.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international collaborative effort to create an interoperable network of biodiversity databases and information technology tools that will
enable users to navigate and access the world's vast quantities of biodiversity information.
The purpose of establishing GBIF is to design, implement, co-ordinate, and promote the compilation, linking, standardisation, digitisation and global dissemination of the world's biodiversity data, within an appropriate framework for property rights and due attribution.
GBIF will work in close co-operation with established programmes and organisations that compile, maintain and use biological information resources. The participants, working through GBIF, will establish and support a distributed information system that will enable users to access and utilise vast quantities of new and existing biodiversity information to generate new knowledge, wealth and ecological sustainability.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was established on 1 March 2001. Currently there are fifteen countries that have signed the formal Memorandum of Understanding; Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.A. Over US $2 million was pledged from member countries towards the first twelve months of GBIF's activities. The GBIF Board met on 9-11 March 2001 in Montreal, Canada and a small delegation from Australia attended. The closing date for bids from countries to host the Secretariat was 1 March, and four bids are currently under consideration: Australia, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. Australia hosted the bid assessment team on 7th of May in Canberra. ABRS will continue to report on GBIF developments in future issues of Biologue.