1. A note from CBCN Executive Director
2. Message from Ahmed Djoghlaf
3. Plant conservation in a changing world
4. Preparing to Launch the North American Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy
5. Biodiversity, climate change, and cultural diversity
6. The urgent need for biodiversity information
7. Adapting to a Changing World
8. The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium and a new biodiversity center at the Montréal Botanical Garden
9. Stopping the Green Invasion! Memorial University of Newfoundland Botanical Garden Takes Aim at Invasive Alien Species
10. What's Coming Up at CITES CoP 14
11. Letter from Wuhan: A report on the Third Global Botanic Gardens Congress
12. The Montréal Botanical Garden Formally Reinforces its Commitment to Biodiversity Conservation, and hosts a Wollemi Pine
13. Meeting of the Canadian Pollination Protection Initiative
14. Summer is around the corner. Make it count!
15. First Sustainability Camp: a Success
16. Earth Day Celebration at UBC Botanical Garden

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6. The urgent need for biodiversity information, Tom Hammond, IUCN

Environmental degradation and species loss continue to accelerate. Around the world, conservation and scientific organizations are working against time to close critical knowledge gaps in order to conserve biodiversity and the Earth’s life support systems. Investment and development decisions are often taken with an incomplete picture of potential impacts on biodiversity. While solutions may be found to reverse these trends, this will only be possible with comprehensive data, information and knowledge on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

Accessing biodiversity data and sharing conservation knowledge are not simple tasks, however. Much of the data, information and knowledge conservationists require is fragmented, difficult to find, or simply not accessible. This challenge is considerably magnified in many developing countries – many of which are mega-diverse countries – where the consequences of under development and the “digital divide” present enormous challenges to the realization of successful conservation efforts on the ground.

Plant biodiversity is an important case in point. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation underscores the pressing need for comprehensive global data on plant diversity, distributions, status, and risks – as a basis for coordinated conservation efforts. Yet despite international efforts to improve access to plant data many gaps in our knowledge remain – particularly important regional gaps in key biodiversity “hotspots”, such as the Amazon Basin and Congo Basin.

The success of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in placing climate change firmly on the global agenda is premised largely on open access to data, and the integration of that data in predictive global climate models. A similar effort is required in the biodiversity conservation community, integrating not only biodiversity data but also multiple domains such as space-based sensors, terrestrial weather, socio-economic data, and ocean and terrain models – among others – into predictive models for biodiversity.

A growing international cooperative effort of conservation organizations, research agencies, and scientific institutions – the Conservation Commons – is working to respond to this challenge, collectively addressing barriers to access, more effectively connecting practitioners to data and information assets, and developing and adopting standards for integrating these assets to support the generation of knowledge and best practice. Building on existing efforts and founded on a common set of Principles, now endorsed by over 75 organizations, the Conservation Commons seeks ensure open access and fair use of data, information, and knowledge on the conservation of biodiversity – for the global conservation community and beyond.

For more information please contact tom.hammond@iucn.org, or call 514 287 9704, ext. 361