Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, stressed that to protect it, we must first better understand marine biodiversity [press release]. There is a wealth of information available, but data are still patchy, and many places in the ocean are still unexplored.
Ms Irina Bokova also said, “Good data is essential for good policy” and recognized the role of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and specifically the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), part of the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE).
Indeed, OBIS integrates over a thousand datasets from several hundred institutions worldwide, to provide access to 32 million observations of >100,000 marine species. It is by far the largest global information source of marine species distributions and becomes a powerful tool to provide quantitative baselines of biodiversity at the regional and global level.
Being one of the most important legacies of the 10-year Census of Marine Life, IOC/IODE is proud to be the new home for OBIS since the IOC Assembly in June 2009 adopted OBIS within its IODE Programme (Resolution XXXV-4). OBIS plays a key role in IOC/IODE and UNESCO's programmes and Strategy for Action on Climate Change, as well as contributes to the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Links:
22-May-2012: International Day for Biological Diversity “Marine Biodiversity”
Date:
Tue, 2012-05-22
