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Measuring progress toward the goals of the 2010 Global Biodiversity Challenge (see http://www.biodiv.org/doc/ref/gbc-report-en.pdf) requires a baseline from which to measure. If we had, as a digital resource, all of the species occurrence records made over the past 300 years, we would have that baseline. There is no time to go out and re-sample all the living creatures of the Earth. Rather, we can make use of the sampling that has been done by scientists and other collectors over three centuries.
GBIF's mission is to make the world's primary species occurrence data freely and universally available via the Internet. In so doing, it is directly related to the construction of the baseline needed to measure the rate of biodiversity loss and therefore to providing indications of whether that loss rate is changing.
In one sense, the baseline is already in hand: the approximately 1.5 billion specimens in the world's natural history museums and herbaria. Unfortunately, the data that are associated with these specimens are not digital, and therefore an actual measuring stick does not yet exist. However, if these data are digitised and brought on line, the range of analyses that could be performed would far exceed anything we can do today.
One of GBIF's major work areas is to encourage the digitisation of natural history collection specimen label data. By also helping to develop standards for software and data-sharing, providing indices and registries of biodiversity specimen and observation data, and coordinating the efforts of many data providers through its network of Participant Nodes, GBIF is contributing in a major way to achieving the 2010 goals.
It is to be hoped that a worldwide society committed to sustainable development will be able to keep species like the Boyd's forest dragon ( Hypsilurus boydii) out of the hot seat, and at the same time protect what Conservation International and others call "biodiversity hotspots". GBIF's philosophy of open biodiversity information sharing contributes directly to sustainable development.
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