Working in networks to make biodiversity data more available

Abstract

It became apparent a few decades ago that biodiversity is declining worldwide at nearly unprecedented rates. This poses ethical and self-interested challenges to people, and has triggered renewed efforts to understand the status and trends of what remains. Since biodiversity does not recognise human boundaries, this requires the sharing of information between countries, agencies within countries, non-governmental bodies, citizen groups and researchers. The effective monitoring of biodiversity and sharing of the data requires convergence on methods and definitions, best achieved within a relatively loose organisational structure, called a network. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) is one such structure. This chapter acts as an introduction to the GEO BON biodiversity observation handbook, which documents some of the co-learning achieved in its first years of operation. It also addresses the basic questions of how to set up a biodiversity observation network, usually consisting of a number of pre-existing elements.