Benefits of GBIF Participation

In building a case for a country or international organization to join GBIF, you will need to explain the benefits of GBIF Participation and of establishing a node. In 2019, during GBIF’s Governing Board meeting, the GBIF Participants were asked to provide statements on how they summarize GBIF’s value and communicate it to colleagues and funders. A selection of the answers given are provided here for you to review and compare. Consider which benefits of Participation are common across the statements and which are unique to the specific Participant concerned. You can find further information about each GBIF Participant delegation by following the links to the country pages on the GBIF website.

Particpant examples

Read these statements from GBIF Participants on how they communicate GBIF’s value, and consider how they relate to the context of your country or organization.

🇦🇺 Australia

The major biodiversity assessment and monitoring challenges confronting nations are inherently transnational and thus demand data at such scale. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility delivers three key functions for Australia.

  1. First, it provides the national and global biodiversity research community access to the best available transnational data to support their work.

  2. Second, it provides a global focal point to foster data interoperability, promulgation of data standards and architectural alignment, which inherently leads to a smoother flow of data.

  3. And finally it allows Australian biodiversity data generated by collections, museums, researchers, ecological monitoring and citizen science programs to deliver impact globally. Conversely, it allows Australian researchers and decision makers access to data that would be otherwise hard to obtain for purposes such as biosecurity risk assessment and climate change scenario planning.

GBIF has achieved what few other environmental domains have been able to achieve globally and acts as a strong exemplar to scientific and research funding infrastructure initiatives of the level of coordination and cooperation within the biodiversity domain.

🇧🇪 Belgium

GBIF is a unique infrastructure delivering access to a vast quantity of evidence data from various sources (specimens, observations, monitoring). It is a fantastic indexation tool for biodiversity data. It provides a powerful common denominator aggregating data tool.

Thanks to capacity enhancement programmes and numerous training workshops, GBIF succeeded to create a vibrant community of nodes supporting data publishers and users around the globe.

GBIF’s Data Citation mechanism is amongst the most advanced in open data and open science landscape.

🇨🇦 Canada

In communicating the value of GBIF to colleagues and funders, Canada emphasizes that:

  • GBIF provides Canadian citizens and stakeholders with an easy, reliable one-stop source available anywhere for accessing Canadian and global biodiversity information, wherever the data was generated;

  • GBIF provides great added value from the perspective that it facilitates aggregating relevant data from different sources and reviewing data quality which can be very labour-intensive.

  • Like many other countries, the Government of Canada committed to an Open Government Strategy. Membership in GBIF and contribution of Canadian biodiversity datasets directly supports Open Government activities.

  • Participation in GBIF also contributes to Canada’s data and information requirements for Canadian commitments to intergovernmental processes. For example, having detailed biodiversity data contributes to the Convention for Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 19 on the sharing of biodiversity knowledge and also on target 9 (invasive species), target 11 (protected areas), target 12 (avoiding extinctions), and target 13 (conserving genetic resources).

🇬🇭 Ghana

I would like to summarize the value proposition of GBIF for Ghana in four ways:

  • GBIF is an international community and / infrastructure of excellence that is truly dedicated to serving open biodiversity data for science, conservation and policy.

  • GBIF is an excellent practitioner of the “new” and existing discipline of biodiversity informatics.

  • GBIF is a means to achieving national commitments to inter-governmental cooperation / agreements such as Clearing House Mechanisms (CHM) of the CBD.

  • GBIF is a powerful aggregator of worldwide biodiversity data that is crucial for biodiversity research and science.

🇮🇪 Ireland

To summarize GBIF’s value from Ireland’s perspective:

  1. It internationalizes Ireland’s work – being a small island the temptation for us is to have a national focus – GBIF allows us to participate easily and proactively in a global initiative/network with all the benefits that this brings

  2. Through Ireland’s participation in GBIF it ensures that knowledge on the spatial distribution of Irish biodiversity contributes to the global biodiversity database, - important that we are not overlooked!

  3. It provides a valuable and good value for money resource for researchers within, and associated with, Ireland to use in biodiversity related research, thereby improving the evidence base on Ireland’s biodiversity and how it is changing.

🇰🇷 Korea, Republic of

The data from Korean Biodiversity need to be registered and distributed through the GBIF’s integrated portal to manage and secure strategically the national biological resources. It is also necessary to respond to international issues of ABS* by following the Korea’s ratification in May 2017 on the Nagoya Protocol. In summary, I would like to say that the GBIF’s values are to collect and share the original data and samples of biological resources to people, and then they can use them for various purposes of environmental monitoring, biodiversity management & conservation, and further industrial uses in medicines, cosmetics, health functional foods, etc.

*Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity

🇲🇽 Mexico

GBIF is the most comprehensive source of free spatial biodiversity information in the world, really important since biodiversity does not recognize political frontiers and many analysis need to include the whole range of species distribution, assess invasive species, changes caused by climate change or other drivers. Having access to those data has proved to be very useful tool, despite we might like to have additional data on species population, for example, to assess endangered species. For many megadiverse countries, this infrastructure provides the basic information needed for better decisions, that provide opportunities for collaboration in different ways. GBIF has already proved its value.

🇵🇹 Portugal

We summarize GBIF’s value based on achievements obtained from our participation so far, starting by highlighting the measurable indicators of performance:

  • Artículos arbitrados por los investigadores con afiliación portuguesa, usando los datos de GBIF

  • Citaciones de los artículos arbitrados publicados utilizando datos de instituciones portugueses publicados por GBIF

  • El aumento medio anual del 130% en el número de datos accesibles publicados por Portugal desde la aplicación del nódulo portugués en 2013, habiendo aumentado de 99 mil registros a los 7,1 millones en actualidad

Sin embargo, el mayor impacto/valor de GBIF para Portugal está muy centrado en otros componentes, o sea creación de capacidad, infraestructuras, ciencia abierta y cooperación internacional.

🇹🇬 Togo

GBIF es una comunidad de entusiastas de la biodiversidad, una plataforma de científicos y legisladores currando para conectar datos de biodiversidad con la ciencia y el desarrollo; una plataforma que lucha por ofrecer gratuitamente material para la toma de decisiones para comprender datos de biodiversidad con la finalidad de preservar y conservar la biodiversidad para la generaciones presentes y futuras. Más que una plataforma, GBIF es una comunidad.

Esta iniciativa loable solo se puede comunicar por la ilustración. A los científicos e investigadores mediante las numerosas aplicaciones que están emergiendo y que ayudan en el análisis y la comprensión de los datos movilizados y disponibles en acceso abierto. A los responsables de la toma de decisiones se les comunica el GBIF a través de la pertinencia de la producciones científicas resultantes del análisis de los datos disponibles y teniendo en cuenta sus preocupaciones, especialmente en términos de gestión, la preservación o conservación del medio ambiente con el fin de mitigar los efectos relacionado con el cambio climático.

Consider your own country or organization

Después de leer las declaraciones de algunos de los países participantes sobre cómo comunican el valor de GBIF a nivel nacional, busque los temas que se mencionan con frecuencia y que cree que podrían ser relevantes para su país u organización. Anote al menos tres ejemplos en su hoja de actividades.