Brussels, 05/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - Philippe Busquin, European Commissioner for Research, gave unreserved support on Monday to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), whose steering council will be meeting for the first time from 9 to 11 March in Montreal. The GBIF is an ambitious international structure that will be essential for improving access to data on flora and fauna world-wide. Mr Busquin seized this opportunity to explain the role that the Commission plans to play within the GBIF, of which it is an associate member.
The setting in place of the GBIF was approved in Copenhagen on 2 and 3 December 2000 by 32 countries, including 11 EU Member States. Its aim is to set in place a "portal" providing universal access to information on biodiversity resources of countries that are part of the initiative. In other words, it will allow research into databases located around the world and users will be able to use search engines to access a significant volume of data both interactively and in real time. The Facility also aims to provide training and know-how accessible to all countries world-wide, especially the developing countries.
Ten countries are currently members of GBIF, including six EU Member States (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden). The European Commission, for its part, is an associate member, which implies that it does not have voting rights. Its role will essentially be to provide support for the Facility by proposing projects. More specifically, it proposes setting in place and coordinating a European platform for supporting the GBIF. It is with this in mind, moreover, that its Directorate General for Research published in the Official Journal of 20 February a call for proposals aimed at establishing a European Network on Biodiversity Information (ENBI) through the intermediary of the programmes called "Quality of life and management of living resources" and "Energy, environment and sustainable development". This network aims to gather at European level the technical and human resources needed to contribute to achieving the general objectives of the GBIF and to develop original European activities in the field of information on biodiversity.
On the strength of this commitment, the Commission hopes that the first meeting of the GBIF steering council, this year, will decide to fix the seat of its general secretariat in an EU Member State. To date, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands have offered to be the location.