“By 2020, knowledge, the science base and technologies relating to biodiversity, its values, functioning, status and trends, and the consequences of its loss, are improved, widely shared and transferred, and applied.” Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010)

The EU BON (“Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network”) project (Hoffmann et al. 2014) was funded under the European Union’s Framework Programme 7, from December 2012 to May 2017. The project developed and/or refined tools for the mobilisation and integration of scattered biodiversity data from the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms (Wetzel et al. 2015). EU BON’s efforts have contributed towards transforming these data into policy-relevant information.

This infographic (Fig. 1) illustrates how biodiversity data flow from collection and collation (section with grey background) to policy reporting (section with orange background), in order to track progress towards achieving Aichi Biodiversity Target 19 (knowledge, science and technology) of the UN Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. This Plan, along with its twenty so-called Aichi Biodiversity Targets, provide a short-term framework for countries to measure the impact of their actions aimed at halting global biodiversity loss.

Figure 1.

This infographic illustrates EU BON's contribution towards meeting Aichi Biodiversity Target 19.

EU BON’s efforts (shown in blue colour) to improve the collation and sharing of biodiversity data have directly contributed to supporting a policy process. This was achieved by collating/sharing biodiversity data so as to make them available to all via the Global Biodiversity Facility (GBIF) which, in turn, produces an indicator entitled Growth in Species Occurrence Records Accessible Through GBIF. This global indicator, curated by the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP) as part of a suite of global indicators, is used to track progress towards meeting Aichi Biodiversity Target 19. EU BON’s specific contributions are detailed in Table 1.

Table 1. Download as CSV 

EU BON’s tools and services have improved the management and sharing of biodiversity data.

Product/service name	Description
Pluto F	Workbench to mobilise and curate biodiversity data.
ARPHA-BioDiv	Toolbox for scholarly publishing and dissemination of biodiversity data.
TreatmentBank	Free and open service to convert, store and disseminate biodiversity data extracted from publications.
GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (GBIF -IPT v2.3)	Free open source software that enables sharing biodiversity datasets through the GBIF network.
EU BON training	Trainings and workshops have further supported efforts to improve data management and data sharing practices.

This infographic was supported by EU BON, a 7th Framework Programme project funded by the European Union (Contract No. 308454).

This article was supported by EU BON (“Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network”), a 7th Framework Programme project funded by the European Union (Contract No. 308454).