The establishment of GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, is being directed by GEO, the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (www.earthobservations.org). As of September 2008, GEO includes 74 member countries, the EU, and 51 Participating Organisations including GBIF. The aim of GEOSS is to promote informed decision-making for sustainable development through understanding of the Earth system. This is a huge task involving the co-ordination of many different observing systems (e.g., remote sensing, in situ, etc.) at national, regional and global levels, to enable data sharing and interoperability. GEO takes a cross-cutting approach to promoting interoperability by identifying nine Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs) which share many inter-dependencies: disasters, health, energy, climate, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture, biodiversity. It is obvious that GBIF can contribute to many of these areas. In particular, GBIF can play a key role in the establishment of the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), the main activity within the biodiversity SBA. In fact, the GBIF Secretariat helped to organize a workshop in 2006 that ultimately recommended the establishment of a biodiversity observation network within the GEOSS framework.

On the recommendation of its Executive Committee, GBIF has become a Participating Organisation within GEO and undertakes a ‘middle-road’ involvement wherein GBIF contributes in pursuit of common goals while bearing in mind the limited resources available. In addition to taking an active role in discussions around the implementation of GEO BON, GBIF also leads on a related GEO task (B1-06-03) entitled “Capturing historical and new biodiversity data” is being lead by GBIF. As the title indicates, this task has been expanded beyond just capturing historical data to encompass the full data mobilisation plan defined in the DIGIT Global Strategy and Action Plans (GSAP) for mobilisation of primary biodiversity data. The goals of this task are to (a) develop a strategic plan for the capture and mobilisation of  various types of 'fit for use' historical and new biodiversity data through multi-cultural, heterogenous and distributed data custodians; (b) develop criteria for Data Rescue Centers; and (c) develop strategies for industrialisation of capture, digitisation and mobilisation of primary biodiversity data.

Over the past 2 years, GBIF has been involved in several activities in relation to GEOSS.