Briefing sets out GBIF role ahead of first IPBES plenary meeting

A new briefing outlines the potential role GBIF and its network can play in the new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), whose first plenary meeting takes place in Bonn, Germany from 21 to 26 January.

The briefing, available online is aimed at informing delegates to IPBES, as well as GBIF Participants and stakeholders, about the potential areas for partnership between these complementary initiatives.

Key messages from the briefing include:

• GBIF has a critical role to play in several of the potential activities in the IPBES work programme under discussion at the plenary, especially:
  • Identifying and prioritizing knowledge gaps;
  • Partnerships with long-term observation and monitoring programmes;
  • Addressing capacity building needs; and
  • Increasing access to data, information and knowledge.
• In submissions to IPBES ahead of the plenary meeting, several national governments have acknowledged the role of GBIF in supporting the capacity building functions of the new platform.
• GBIF’s own submission to IPBES emphasizes its contribution to the new platform based on its unique position at the data-science interface. The GBIF network can support IPBES assessments with data, and can also help to store and publish data arising from the assessment process, ensuring the availability of those data for future assessment and policy needs.
• The IPBES plenary is being asked to consider development of ‘national centres of excellence’ in biodiversity and ecosystem services through mentoring programmes, training and regional collaboration. These can build on GBIF’s experience of capacity building through national nodes and regions, implementing a distributed infrastructure for biodiversity data publication, access and discovery for use by science and society.

GBIF’s Governing Board has endorsed a set of future priorities that include mobilization, integration and curation of, and access to, large datasets suited to assessing biodiversity trends at regional or global scales, specifically aimed at meeting the needs of IPBES assessments among other policy requirements.
 
For more information please contact:
Tim Hirsch
GBIF Secretariat
thirsch@gbif.org