Biodiversity is crucial for maintaining ecosystem health and resilience, yet it faces unprecedented threats from climate change, habitat loss, and human activities. Despite its importance, biodiversity data remain fragmented, especially from biodiversity-rich countries such as India. Many species and ecosystems are under-documented, limiting our understanding of their distribution, status, and trends. 

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (G-BIF) initiative seeks to address this gap by promoting the mobilization, sharing, and publishing of high-quality biodiversity data. By providing standardized platforms and protocols for data collection and reporting, G-BIF enables researchers, institutions, and citizen scientists to contribute to a growing global repository of biodiversity information. Such data are critical for evidence-based conservation planning, policy formulation, and monitoring of biodiversity changes over time.

This webinar aims to sensitize participants to the challenges of biodiversity data availability, introduce tools and best practices for data mobilization, and demonstrate how contributions from biodiversity hotspots like India can inform global conservation efforts.

Objective: 

• To introduce participants to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and its role in mobilizing and publishing biodiversity data.

• To build awareness on data standards, for ensuring quality, and usability of biodiversity data.

• To encourage contributions from researchers, institutions, and citizen scientists in biodiversity-rich regions like India to strengthen global biodiversity datasets.