International Connections Article from the Winter 2003 NBII Access newsletter

IABIN Countries Report Wide Variety of I3N Benefits

September 30, 2002, marked the official end of the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) Invasives Information Network (I3N) pilot effort, but the invasives activities initiated by seed grants from the U.S. State Department in 11 countries of the Americas* continue to bring a variety of benefits to the participants. The I3N pilot project called for participants to inventory existing invasive activities in their countries and to create and make available, via the Internet, catalogs of invading species names, projects, experts, and relevant data sets documented during the inventory.

The catalogs compiled by the participants are available either on the participants' Web sites or on the I3N Project Web site, <http://www.iabin-us.org/projects/i3n/i3n_project.html> (the Project Web site includes links to participants' Web sites). While the catalogs were the expected products of the project, the final reports from the participants listed a wide variety of additional benefits accruing during the effort, from the creation of the first listing in the country of species and specialists, to the discovery of possible invasive events, to the increased interest of the country's scientific community in invasive species.

Additional benefits due to leveraging were anticipated, but their nature and value could only be imagined until the project was under way. Andrea Grosse, I3N project manager for NBII, reported for example that one participant added to their collection of specimens of invading organisms; another created a photo collection. Jamaica produced an educational brochure on invasives (which credited the I3N project), and El Salvador developed species profiles/fact sheets. The information gathered contributed to the development of one country's national invasives strategy and provided a list of game and fish species that was annexed to a national biodiversity law of another. Capacity building, both human resources and information infrastructure, was a benefit reported by all.

Difficulties with the I3N Cataloguer, a software tool that exports local records as standardized XML, delayed realizing another objective of the project: to access the distributed databases in a uniform manner. However, NBII work continues to develop a single point access capability.

IABIN seeks to promote sustainable development and biodiversity conservation through the sharing of biodiversity information for decision-making and education among the countries of the Americas. More information about the project, including the final project report that lists all of the benefits reported by the participants, is available on the Web site at <http://www.iabin-us.org/projects/i3n/i3n_project.html>.

*Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, and Paraguay.

IABIN and CHM Plan Joint Meeting

Harmonizing the visions of IABIN and the Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM) of the Convention on Biological Diversity and jointly planning complementary activities that will support both initiatives will be the main items for discussion at a joint meeting of IABIN and the CHM, planned for early June 2003, in Cancun, Mexico. The meeting will serve as the CHM Regional Meeting for the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) and the 3rd IABIN Council Meeting. The meeting planners expect that attendees will include official Focal Points for both the CHM and IABIN, as well as representatives of NGOs, academic institutions, and the private sector active in either network.