TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Biodiversity Conservation Standards Silvio Olivieri IUCN The World Conservation Union

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Agenda The issue IUCN functioning Standards focus OASIS agreement Next steps (discussion)

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Background IUCN has worked on the development of several standards for use within the conservation field, most notably: –The IUCN Management Categories for Protected Areas –The IUCN Red List of Endangered Species Categories

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union It is also at the center of several Global information systems concerning biodiversity conservation: –Red List / SIS (Species Information Service) –WDPA, the World Database on Protected Areas –ECOLEX, Database of legal resources on environment and conservation

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union It is also supporting several collaboration portals for different communities: –WCLN, World Conservation Learning Network –PALNet, Protected Areas Learning Network IUCN members have developed similar systems at global, regional or national scales

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The Issue… These systems have their own constituency, practices, and organizational arrangements with different levels of success But:They do not talk to each other  Limited capacity for easily performing higher level analysis & modeling

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Development and use of structured data standards in the field of Biodiversity Conservation are an important element for leveraging present systems As a union, IUCN is in the best position to facilitate the process of developing and adopting these standards in practice

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Who is the IUCN? The World Conservation Union is the world’s largest and most important conservation network. Founded in 1948, it is a unique combination of governmental and NGO members with UN General Assembly Observer Status The Union brings together 82 States, 111 government agencies, more than 800 non- governmental organizations (NGOs), and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide partnership.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The Union’s mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. The World Conservation Union is a multicultural, multilingual organization with 1000 staff located in 62 countries. Its headquarters are in Gland, Switzerland.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The IUCN Commissions Over 10,000 volunteers, specialists from over 180 countries organized around 6 IUCN Commissions… Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Promote conscious, effective, and equitable sharing of knowledge resources to advance conservation Set of principles for responsible sharing of data, information and knowledge Conservation Commons

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Conservation Commons Partners

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union WDPA: The World Database of Protected Areas

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The WDPA Consortium

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union WDPA 2006 Summary Protected Areas Total number with GIS data National level IUCN categories I - VI 70,58526,384 National level, non-IUCN categories 47,32031,137 TOTAL117,90557,521 International Conventions2,9781,595 Regional Conventions1,784n/a

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union ECOLEX is an information service on environmental law, operated jointly by FAO, IUCN and UNEP. Over 100,000 legal references on treaties, national legislation, soft law and other non- binding policy documents, judicial decisions, and law and policy literature.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union PALNet Protected Areas Learning Network

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union PALNet An on-line Collaboration Portal for all stakeholders working on Protected Areas Exchange of data and information on Documents, Experts, Projects, Organizations User driven Linked to the WDPA

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union WDPA GBIF ECOLEX SIS ICE Species in PAs NASA PA Archive State of Biodiversity Conservation Portal Structured Information

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Un-structured Information PALNet NGOs ECOLEX IUCN Publications State of Biodiversity Conservation Portal Others…

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The IUCN – OASIS Partnership In June 2006, IUCN and OASIS agreed on establishing an OASIS Section on Biodiversity Conservation Standards

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union About OASIS OASIS is a member-led, international non-profit standards consortium focused on global e- business. OASIS drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS was founded in 1993, and has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union About OASIS Standards There are over 60 OASIS Technical Committees producing royalty-free and RAND standards. The open OASIS technical process is expressly designed to promote consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS cooperates with over 50 other standards and industry organizations to reduce duplication and promote interoperability for OASIS Standards

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union OASIS Standards Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) v1.0Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) v1.0 Business Centric Methodology (BCM) v1.0 Common Alerting Protocol v1.0 Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v1.1 Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) v1.0 Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) v2.0 DocBook v4.1 DocBook v4.5 ebXML Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement (CPPA) v2ebXML Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement (CPPA) v2 ebXML Message Service Specification v2.0 ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) v2.0 ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) v3.0 ebXML Registry Services Specification (RS) v2.0 ebXML Registry Services Specification (RS) v3.0 Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element v1.0Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element v1.0 Election Markup Language (EML) v4.0 Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) v1.0Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) v1.0 eXtensible Access Control Markup Language TC v2.0 (XACML)eXtensible Access Control Markup Language TC v2.0 (XACML) OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) v1.0 Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) v1.1 Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) V2.0 Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture v1.0 Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) v1.0 Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) v2.0 Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) v2.0Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) v2.0 Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) v3.0.2Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) v3.0.2 Universal Business Language (UBL) v1.0 Universal Business Language Naming & Design Rules v1.0 (UBL NDR)Universal Business Language Naming & Design Rules v1.0 (UBL NDR) Web Services Notification (WSN) v1.3 WS-Reliability (WS-R) v1.1 Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) v1.2 Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) v1.0 Web Services Security v1.0 (WS-Security 2004) Web Services Security v1.1 Web Services Security SAML Token Profile v 1.0 and REL Token Profile v1.0Web Services Security SAML Token Profile v 1.0 and REL Token Profile v1.0 Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) v1.1 WSDM Management Using Web Services v1.0 (WSDM- MUWS)WSDM Management Using Web Services v1.0 (WSDM- MUWS) WSDM Management Using Web Services v1.0 (WSDM- MOWS)WSDM Management Using Web Services v1.0 (WSDM- MOWS) XML Catalogs v1.1 XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF) v1.1

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The Biodiversity Conservation Standards Section OASIS currently has 6 member sections Each member section is a community of interest around a family of standards The Section defines priorities and establishes one or more technical committees to focus on the development of specific standards

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union The Biodiversity Conservation Standards Section Biodiversity Conservation Standards aim 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.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Potential Partners The Conservation Community. Organizations whose primary mission is to promote and educate the public about nature, biodiversity and conservation. The Scientific Community. Research centers and consortia that are generating primary data, developing and maintaining biodiversity databases and information exchange taxonomies. Governmental & Inter-Governmental Agencies. Public agencies responsible for the development and implementation of conservation-related policies and decisions. The Private Sector. Companies that have adopted explicit policies to reduce the impact to biodiversity within their operations, and who wish to improve their impact on the environment.

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Why OASIS? They have a proven approach to help reach broad consensus on standards Their outreach to the broader information community will accelerate adoption of the biodiversity conservation standards It works on Open standards

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Challenges Present IUCN standards are still changing. Much of the difficulty will not be the data standard itself, but reaching agreement on the standard contents The conservation focus means that the stakeholders are a high diversity, from private to science sectors with different needs, inputs and oppinions

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Time line… June 2006: signing of the IUCN – OASIS MoU June – December: initial integration of the OASIS – IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Section 1 st quarter 2007: Section meeting to establish governance, work plan, priorities 2007: Establishment of Technical Committees

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Priority Focus Areas Species Conservation –Red List categories –Associated authority files Protected Areas – Management Categories –management effectiveness Conservation Priority Sites Description XML tagging of Conservation Documents (XML DTD, …)

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Participation in the Biodiversity Conservation Section Every organization interested in the section’s work is welcomed Governance of the section is definde by its members

TDWG Annual Meeting, December 2006The World Conservation Union Thanks Please get involved! Silvio Olivieri