An expert panel has selected seven projects Pacific-based organizations to receive funding from the latest round of the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) programme.
The supported projects include two regional data mobilization grants, one national data mobilization grant, three institution-level data mobilization grants and one data-use grant, which are described in full in the September 2020 call for proposals.
The teams began work in July 2021, with all projects set to complete by June 2023. In August, representatives from each project participated in a virtual training workshop on data mobilization supported as always by a cadre of volunteer trainers and mentors. Attendees learned key skills required to publish and use data from the GBIF network and will contribute to the further development of the regional community of practice by replicating the training within their institutions' own networks.
The round of projects aims to build on the impact of the programme's first phase in the Pacific. The earlier group included five BID-funded projects engaging 15 data publishers that mobilized 100 biodiversity datasets containing more than 180,000 occurrence records relevant to the regions’ priority policy needs. BID's training and e-learning curricula have also helped improve biodiversity data skills and added dozens of Pacific-based professionals to the GBIF community of practice in the wider Oceania region.
2021 BID Pacific projects
| Project | Country of project lead | Funding from BID | Co-funding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building capacity at SPREP for data mobilization and use | Samoa | €20,000 | €12,823 |
| Using invasive species and biodiversity data for decision-making in the Pacific region | Samoa | €60,000 | €106,621 |
| Strengthening processes for invasive species and biodiversity data mobilization in the Pacific region | Samoa | €120,000 | €83,852 |
| Mobilizing biodiversity data from natural history collections in Fiji | Fiji | €39,940 | €44,422 |
| Creating a framework for mobilizing ecological research data from the New Guinea Binatang Research Center | Papua New Guinea | €19,548 | €8,320 |
| Mobilization and digitization of natural history collections at the University of Papua New Guinea | Papua New Guinea | €19,998 | €4,751 |
| Addressing Oceania’s freshwater biodiversity data deficiency by mobilizing Melanesian datasets | Fiji | €88,288 | €40,900 |
This programme is funded by the European Union.