Background to the GIASIPartnership
The calls by COP and others for increase in information on Invasive Alien Species have produced many responses, and a great deal of valuable information has been made available. However there is a lack of coordination between the information producers and they make their information available in different places and in different ways. This has led to unfilled gaps in knowledge, duplication of work, and problems for users in navigating to the web sites and publications to find the data they need. In order to meet Aichi Target 9 knowledge compilation and dissemination needs to be as efficient as possible, and tailored to the needs of the users.
To address this problem, and in response to COP decision X/38 requesting the Executive Secretary to convene a meeting to consider ways to increase the interoperability of existing information resources, key information producers have come together to build the GIASIPartnership. At an expert meeting in Copenhagen participants developed a Joint Work programme (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/15/INF/14). This was refined into the Operational Plan of the GIASIPartnership at a Workshop in London involving representatives of the Parties. This Plan was submitted to CBD COP11 as an information document (see Partnership Documents page). In October 2012 at COP 11 in Hyderabad the first of the Partners sighed a memorandum of Cooperation with the Secretariat of the CBD and formally constituted the GIASIPartnership. Presentations made at the Side Event at which the Partnership was launched can be found hosted here by GBIF.
A first output is this Partnership Gateway, a website that provides access to information stored across the Web on many sites. The gateway is still in development, but enables users to locate information, tools, references and contacts across GIASIPartner members and beyond, and to address questions through an on-line Forum. As we develop the Gateway with input from Parties we foresee it becoming an invaluable tool in the workflow of the users in combating Invasive Alien Species.
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