OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and IUCN (The World Conservation Union) have partnered to define and promote international standardization in the domain of biodiversity conservation. The goal of the partnership is to contribute to the establishment of a solid foundation for a global biodiversity information infrastructure, with special reference to the conservation of nature, species loss and ecosystem integrity. These efforts up to now have focused mainly on identifying common-sense categories to refer to concepts in common use in the biodiversity conservation field. With the extensive use of the Internet and the maturity of information systems related to biodiversity conservation, the focus is now shifting to standardizing the notation for these concepts to support interoperability among existing and future biodiversity information exchange.

Environmental degradation and habitat loss continue to accelerate. Solutions may be found to reverse these trends, but only by using global, comprehensive, interoperable information standards that define the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Successful conservation depends on the logical synthesis of biodiversity data, information and knowledge; however multiple barriers exist to access. Much of the data, information and knowledge conservationists require is fragmented, difficult to find or simply not accessible to the conservation community. Moreover, the cost of manually gathering and integrating data which can be accessed often prohibits effective governmental and private-sector conservation-related decision-making. Future uses of biodiversity conservation data will require easy integration with corporate enterprise decision support systems.

The OASIS Biodiversity Conservation Standards programme aims to revolutionize the way conservation information is created, integrated and disseminated by addressing the challenges of establishing global interoperable biodiversity standards that take into account and harmonize existing efforts.

For more information, please contact silvio.olivieri@iucn.org, tom.hammond@iucn.org or peter.roden@oasis-open.org.