site.btaBulgaria Joins Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Bulgaria has become a member of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) after Environment and Water Minister Manol Genov signed a memorandum of understanding, the Environment Ministry said on Friday.

The step will open Bulgaria’s biodiversity records to researchers worldwide and spare the country the cost of maintaining a stand-alone national database, the ministry added.

GBIF is an intergovernmental network that offers free access to an up-to-date catalogue of the planet’s living species. Its membership now totals 107 states and institutions, many of them European. By tapping GBIF’s infrastructure, Bulgaria will be able to standardise and share existing datasets while applying for project funding both at home and across the Balkans.

Making national data available on the GBIF platform should also help Bulgaria meet reporting duties under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the ministry said.

Speaking earlier this month at a UNESCO side event on links between the World Heritage Convention and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, National Nature Protection Service Director Miroslav Kalugerov warned that the world faces “unprecedented” rates of species loss and called for timely, coordinated action.