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Chair : Patricia Mergen¹

Co-Chairs: Garin Cael¹ and Innocent Akampurira²

¹Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren Belgium

²Uganda National Council for Science and technology, Uganda

 

So far identified and contacted contributors to the future IG (not exhaustive and not all present this year at TDWG):

Jean Cossi Ganglo³, Alex Asase⁴, Frank Oguya⁵, Charles Kahindo⁶, Eric Chenin⁷, Elizabeth Arnaud⁸, Franck Theeten¹, Hank Bart⁹, Bryan Heidorn¹⁰, Sediqa Khatieb¹¹, Philbert Nyinondi¹²

 

³ University of Abomey-Calavi. Faculty of Agricultural Science. 01 BP 56 Cotonou (Benin).

⁴Department of Botany, University of Ghana, P. O. Box LG 55 Legon

⁵GBIF node Kenya

⁶ UOB, Université Officielle de Bukavu, DR Congo,

⁷ Centre IRD d'Orléans, Sud Experts Plantes, France;

⁸ Bioversity International, Rome, Italy

⁹ Tulane University Museum of Natural History, Belle Chasse, LA, USA

¹⁰ University of Illinois, USA

¹¹ Biodiversity Geographical Information Systems (BGIS) unit (SANBI),

¹² Tanzania Biodiversity Information facility

 

Time needed (2-3 h)

 

The aim of this (future) Interest Group is to have stakeholders and experts from the so called developing and developed countries active in Cooperation and Development to meet and collaborate.

 

Indeed related projects in the past have largely shown that methods and guidelines used in one region or country, cannot be simply copy pasted, but need to be adapted taking great care of the local conditions and constrains be they political, climatic, cultural or economical.

 

There are symposia foreseen during the conference relevant to Cooperation and Development like the symposium organized by Hank Bart and Bryan Heidorn on African Biodiversity Information, where the TDWG travel awards winner will present their work. This is why the IG workshop would have no presentations except a brief introduction about the history and rational behind the group and the points to discuss.

 

Following up on the outcomes of the TDWG 2010 workshop, the participants will further define the role and set priorities the future of the IG. Identified activities from last year were to:

-         Assess how the current TDWG standards and recommendations matches the needs of Cooperation and Developments and make suggestions for adaptation and improvements

-         Suggest a standard or extensions to existing standards for traditional knowledge information, for accommodating local names of species including ethnological, socio-economical and linguistic concepts

-         Address the lack of information on the knowledge of local communities in biodiversity conservation, climate change, plant virtues in disease curing, human and animal nutrition…

-         Liaise with ethno-botanical and ethno-zoological societies and networks in the concerned countries, promote TDWG and stimulate the involvement of ethno-botanists and ethno-zoologists of these countries in pursuing the work initiated by the former TDWG economic botany subgroup

-         Encourage the development of citizen sciences that will help for a better involvement of local communities and their prestigious knowledge in biodiversity information

-         Design a Legal frameworks for data access and sharing adapted to local context and laws and addressing Access and Benefit Sharing issues (ABS)

-         Identify funding mechanisms for larger participation to TDWG conferences and related events and to organize conferences and meetings devoted entirely to the subject

-         Initiate joint projects in Biodiversity Information and Digital Libraries

-         Initiate mechanisms to get politics and other decision makers more involved in biodiversity conservation strategies

-         Liaise with national relevant regional and global initiatives such as, CEPDEC (The Capacity Enhancement Programme for Developing Countries of GBIF), SEP (Sud-Expert Plants), BioNet International, GBIF, relevant GBIF national nodes, CBD (Convention of Biological Diversity) and GTI (Global Taxonomic Initiative)

Based on the agreed roles and priorities the participants will jointly draft the IG charter during the workshop in order to submit it officially to TDWG after the conference.

This IG aspires to become a collaboration network together with the relevant TDWG regional secretariats and so document and promote the efforts made in biodiversity informatics in the Cooperation and Development context.