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Global communication has expanded remarkably since the inception of the Internet. Technical advances have made distribution of data from major centres to remote parts of the world possible, if those data are in digital form.
Biodiversity is found around the world - there are micro-organisms between granules of rock 3 km below the Earth's surface, rootless plants in the Atacama Desert, thousands of species of beetles in a single rainforest tree. However, biodiversity is not distributed evenly across the face of the planet. An estimated 75% of all species are found in the developing world.
Information about biodiversity (natural history collections, library materials, databases) likewise is not distributed evenly around the globe. Three-quarters or more of data about biodiversity are stored in the developed world. However, most of the data that may be needed can't be transferred because either they are not digitised, or capacity to handle digital information is lacking, or both.
Facilitating digitisation and global dissemination of primary biodiversity data, so that people from all countries can benefit from the use of the information, is the mission of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
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