2010 Asia Regional Nodes Meeting

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat (GBIFs) in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute (WII) of India organized the GBIF – Asian Nodes Regional Meeting and Biodiversity Informatics Workshop in Dehradun, India from 28th – 30th June 2010. The meeting was chaired by Pando Francisco (GBIF NODES Chair). Representatives from University of Tokyo (Japan), Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (South Korea), Wildlife Institute of India (India), Asian Centre for Biodiversity (Philippines), Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica (Chinese Taipei), ICIMOD (Nepal) and BioNet‐EASIANET (Mongolia) participated in the meeting. The GBIF secretariat was represented by Mr. Juan Bello and Dr. Vishwas Chavan.
All the participants felt the compelling need for capacity building and technology up gradation within the region was top priority. There was consensus that Asian region is currently not in a position to establish the formal Asian Regional Nodes Committee (ARNC) and should focus on developing the existing national nodes. The way forward was to have GBIF appoint a regional liaison officer who would facilitate the frequent interaction within Asian node managers which then could evolve into ARNC. The priorities for the region was debated and then matched/compared with the work programme. All most everything included in the work programme was discussed.