Engaging decision-makers

The National Herbarium of Suriname brought together all national institutions that hold plant occurrence data to create a national database for invasive and alien species, non-timber forest products, weeds, and commercial tree species. The utility of making data from this project freely accessible soon led its expansion to include all specimens within the herbarium.

The team worked closely with the country’s policymakers, aligning the project to an existing coordination mechanism on plant genetic resources, national-scale planning, and reporting on progress toward Aichi Targets 12, 13, 19 and 20 in Suriname's Sixth National Report to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

A second project expanded the approach by forming a consortium under the National Institute for Environment and Development. This consortium, known as the Environmental Information Network in Suriname,involves the National Herbarium and the National Zoological Collection of Suriname. Their goal is to mobilize and structure environmental and biodiversity data for national planning and policymaking. The network has supported agreements for data exchange, training of data managers, integration of datasets into national systems, including the Integrated Biodiversity Observatory System Suriname, and publication through GBIF. Through the joint efforts of the project partners, Suriname has also joined GBIF as the 11th country in the Latin America and Caribbean region to do so.

Led by the GBIF Participant node in Benin, this project collaborated with three government institutions to provide data solutions for decision-making. Workshops helped end-users express their information needs creating a workflow guiding data mobilization and research topics for Master's students. Topics included information on the significance of plants to local culture, vector-borne diseases, threats to species, and distribution maps.
The resulting research products received positive feedback, fostering collaboration for more data mobilization. The node will maintain the workflow to engage users in demand-driven data mobilization for decision support.

The Catalog of the Fishes of Colombia, an authoritative online resource, compiles data on 3,797 freshwater and marine fish species. Led by the Biodiversity Informatics Program at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, it involved 100+ taxonomic specialists, government partners and the GBIF node, SiB Colombia.

Coordination challenges were outweighed by the benefits of user engagement and community connections. The project provided valuable taxonomic information for biodiversity monitoring and decision-making across government agencies involved and has been used in community-based projects led by the partners. The project team will continue collaboration with government partners as official advisors on biodiversity matters.