Donald Hobern sees data mobilized by network increasingly relevant for policy, science

The new Executive Secretary of GBIF, Donald Hobern, has taken up his post and set out his vision for the direction of the organization in coming years.

Hobern, former director of the Atlas of Living Australia (www.ala.org.au), succeeds Nicholas King as director of the GBIF Secretariat based in Copenhagen.

Speaking on video (http://vimeo.com/gbif/hobern) following his appointment by the GBIF executive committee, endorsed by the Governing Board, Donald Hobern says: “GBIF has achieved a great deal in its first ten years of existence, and anything we do now is continuing to build on those foundations.”

Among the most exciting aspects, adds Hobern, is the emergence of many of the GBIF national Participants as leaders in their regions, mobilizing very significant quantities of biodiversity data and having plans to digitize large amounts of their collections.

“I think GBIF is increasingly going to develop as an organization that is more and more, realistically, a federation of countries and organizations that are themselves organizing significant amounts of information,” Hobern continues.

“I think that transition towards greater national visibility and greater regional collaboration is one of the things I really want to see going ahead.”

Donald Hobern says one of the most critical aspects of GBIF’s work will continue to be simple delivery of the basic information about what biodiversity occurs in any particular region or location, and how recently it was found there.

In partnership with other biodiversity information initiatives, GBIF will be able to deliver much richer services and information at the country and regional level, says Hobern.

A critical activity for the period ahead, says Hobern, is to meet the need to connect raw biodiversity with the science-driven understanding of the state of ecosystems and the implications for human societies – for example, through the new Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

”A lot of what we have got to be doing over the next few years is identifying the most efficient and appropriate ways for the GBIF network to be delivering data that’s in a form well organized to support IPBES and all these other activities for their science, their reporting and ultimately to assist governments in their policymaking and planning,” Hobern concludes.

For more information contact:

Tim Hirsch, GBIF Secretariat
thirsch@gbif.org