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Gathered for its semi-annual business meeting, the GBIF Governing Board heard reports about its effectiveness to date and made decisions that affect future development of the GBIF network. The reports of the external review team and the Executive Secretary were positive, and showed that GBIF staff and participants have been working very hard and very successfully toward making biodiversity data widely available via the Internet.
GBIF was established in 2001 and 2002, and implemented its first Work Programme in 2003. In 2005 - 2006, the Work Programme will for the first time cover a two-year time span rather than only a single year. The Board agreed with the Secretariat staff that enough experience had been gained in 2003 and 2004 to embark on the longer timeframe.
The meeting was attended by representatives of 38 of GBIF's participants. Also present were observers from 9 Asian and Pacific island nations.
Dr. David Penman, of LandCare Research and head of the New Zealand delegation to GBIF, noted that "we particularly wanted to showcase to the Pacific nations the efforts of GBIF to get information out to the developing Pacific world from the great collections that are held in the UK, the US, New Zealand, Australia and Japan." Mr. Tepa Suaesi, observer from Samoa, said that he attended because he wanted to know how Samoa could benefit from GBIF's efforts to catalogue information from museums and research institutes around the world.
The GBIF delegates were welcomed to New Zealand in a traditional powhiri ceremony held in the marae at Te Papa, and again later by the Minister for Research, Science and Technology, Mr. Pete Hodgson. "Biodiversity is extremely important to New Zealanders, and New Zealand is proud to be one of the founding members of GBIF", said Mr. Hodgson.
Among other reports, the Governing Board heard preliminary results from the independent external review of GBIF that is currently under way. The tenor of the report is positive and encouraging of the continutation of GBIF. Dr. Christoph Haeuser, Chair of the GBIF Board, said that "the review team is doing exactly what the Board asked it to do, which is to review the effectiveness of GBIF to date, and to make recommendations that can be implemented to strengthen its efforts." Delegates were given the opportunity to request that the review committee include certian details in their final report, which will be received by the Board at its tenth meeting, to be held in Brussels in April, 2005.
Elements of this article were drawn from news items on Radio New Zealand International, who are gratefully acknowledged. -- Meredith A. Lane, GBIF Secretariat
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