We have excellent news on the UK’s membership of GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The NBN Trust is the UK Node for GBIF and, in conjunction with other UK stakeholders, in the run-up to COP15, we urged the UK Government to re-instate the UK as a full voting member of GBIF. We are pleased to say these discussions were successful.
GBIF is the international biodiversity data repository, funded by the world’s governments to provide global access to biodiversity data. This data underpins national and global policy goals on biodiversity and is essential to tracking progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The UK is the world’s third largest consumer of international biodiversity data from GBIF.
Despite the central role of UK institutions in GBIF’s operational effectiveness, the UK had progressively lost influence due to funding issues. In recent years, the combined UK contributions had fallen short of the full membership fee, and the UK was consequently relegated to ‘associate participant’ status. Unless full UK membership was resumed, we were even set to lose member status altogether.
We’re delighted that Defra have recently confirmed that they will make up the shortfall in funding to allow a return to full membership in 2023. They will also convene the relevant partners to agree a longer-term funding solution.
This news is incredibly welcome. GBIF is vital to the delivery of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and is a huge asset to UK research and biodiversity conservation. The UK’s return to full membership highlights the importance of biodiversity data and the tremendous value of organisations – such as GBIF, the NBN Trust and our NBN data partners – that work so hard to make data accessible to all.