National Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring (DE0038)
Overview
At-a-Glance
Action Plan: Germany Action Plan 2021-2023
Action Plan Cycle: 2021
Status:
Institutions
Lead Institution: Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety / Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
Support Institution(s): Other stakeholders (ministries, agencies, departments): Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Federal Ministry of Defence Other stakeholders (NGOs, private enterprise, multilateral organisations, working groups): monitoring actors such as the Länder, research institutes, natural history museums and collections, volunteer-run professional societies and professional cartographers
Policy Areas
Access to Information, Environment and Climate, Open Data, Sustainable Development GoalsIRM Review
IRM Report: Germany Action Plan Review 2021-2023
Early Results: Pending IRM Review
Design i
Verifiable: Yes
Relevant to OGP Values: Yes
Ambition (see definition): Low
Implementation i
Completion: Pending IRM Review
Description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address? To combat biodiversity loss effectively, reliable data is needed not only on the condition, but also on the changes in nature and the landscape, as well as on the key variables involved. Various well-established biodiversity monitoring programmes already exist, gathering val-uable data on certain habitats or groups of species, for instance. To date, however, this has been scattered across different actors. The Länder run important monitoring programmes, for example, while professional societies and academic institutions also collect useful data. Furthermore, additional monitoring programmes are needed to expand the current data and to fill in the gaps where too little is known about particular species or habitats.
What is the commitment? The aim of setting up a national Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring is to accelerate the ex-pansion of such monitoring at the national level, and to ensure its long-term future. Opened in January 2021, the Centre forms part of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) in Leipzig. It is intended to be a major driving force behind the nationwide expansion of biodiversity monitoring. It will also unite monitoring research and practice, prepare moni-toring data from existing sources and prepare and aggregate it for public release, fine-tune data management to make this possible, and connect, empower and support the actors concerned. In doing so, the Centre will also harness citizen science projects relating to bio-diversity monitoring.
How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem?The work of the Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring will improve the basis of data on the condition of and changes in nature and the landscape, and make it more accessible. Open and transparent data provision reflects the spirit of the Environmental Information Act (Umweltinformationsgesetz). It should observe FAIR principles by being Findable, Accessi-ble, Interoperable and Re-usable. The broad diversity of monitoring actors will be included by the phased construction of modules for an information and networking platform, and the creation of an Anwendung und Forschung im Dialog (Application and Research in Dialogue) platform. Together, these measures will achieve far-reaching improvements in biodiversity monitoring.
Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?Action to implement the commitment gathers new information and data, consolidates data sources, and also simplifies the findability and accessibility of both new and existing data. This not only increases transparency but also makes participation easier with formats to involve the expert community.
Additional information • Website of the national Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring: https://www.monitoring-zentrum.de/ (in German only at the time of publication)• Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 14 (Life below water), SDG 15 (Life on land)
Milestones Start Date Implementation by First Anwendung und Forschung im Dialog forum June 2021 December 2021 Second Anwendung und Forschung im Dialog forum June 2022 December 2022 Expansion of current website; development of a concept for the web-based information and networking platform January 2021 December 2023