Call for participation: Mobilising open access biodiversity data in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

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About

We invite institutions and individuals working on biodiversity in the Hindu Kush Himalaya to participate in a survey designed to:

• Assess the state of open-access biodiversity data
• Identify capacity-building needs for biodiversity data mobilisation
• Shape regional strategies for data-driven conservation and development planning

Deadline: 28 February 2025
Countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan
 

Why participate

Your input through this survey will help us:

• Understand challenges and opportunities in biodiversity data mobilisation
• Identify participants for the upcoming “Regional training on Biodiversity Data Mobilisation” taking place in April 2025 in Kathmandu, Nepal

Who can participate

Researchers, academics, museums, herbaria, research organisations, government agencies, and citizen-scientists/science networks across the HKH region.
 

About the regional training

The regional training is co-organised by ICIMOD, Zoological Survey of India, Bhutan’s National Biodiversity Centre,; Forest Action Nepal, and National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will cover:

• Foundations of biodiversity informatics
• Data standards, metadata, and ethics
• Hands-on data management and publishing
• Biodiversity data use and application

The training is supported by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (GBIF-CESP) with co-financing from ICIMOD.
 

Eligibility

Participants must:

• Be willing to understand GBIF open access biodiversity infrastructure
• Have basic knowledge of biodiversity data
• Commit to a short preparatory self-paced course at least a week before the onsite event
• Attend on-site training event at ICIMOD
• Engage in hands-on exercises to publish (their own dataset) using the Integrated Publishing Toolkit
• Organise post training knowledge sharing webinars for wider outreach

Other selection criteria:

• Affiliation with an institution working on biodiversity of the HKH region, with a willingness to contribute data to an open access platform such as GBIF
• Have data on species checklist, occurrences or sampling ready to be discussed and published during the regional training
• Basic skills in computer and internet use, particularly in using spreadsheets
• Basic foundational knowledge of geography, biodiversity, and basic taxonomy
• Commitment to sharing lessons learnt from the workshop with other institutions through in-country webinars
• A good command of English for effective communication during the training

Selection will be based on the individual responses. We will ensure balance of geography, gender and thematic representation.
 

Background

The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, rich in biodiversity from four global biodiversity hotspots, faces significant threats from land-use change, habitat degradation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. Despite advancements in biodiversity research across HKH countries, there is a notable gap in awareness, capacity, and open access biodiversity data from the region. While the results and findings from research are widely shared, the actual data underpinning studies is hardly shared or published, and sometimes not even properly stored.

The knowledge about distribution, occurrence, and status of biodiversity is a pre-requisite to addressing the current biodiversity crisis whether it is habitat destruction, loss of genetic diversity, or species threatened with extinction.

Free and open access to biodiversity information supports sustainable development interventions relating to biodiversity and enhanced ecosystem services linked to human wellbeing.

Mobilising biodiversity data on taxonomy, geospatial and temporal distribution, collection information, genetic information and other traits of species will enable wider use in further research, conservation efforts and policymaking, while also recognising and providing proper attribution to the sources, data owners and data collectors.

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