Email: fonoro@infoamerica.net
From my point of view, the Workshop "Bases para a Conservação
da Biodiversidade do Estado de São Paulo" was a sucess.
It's novel approach prove to be sound and enticing. The great
amount of compelling proposals and opinions proved that there
is willingness and enthusiasm to support such a programme.
All the base information provided through the Workshop's web page
before the meeting was very complete and useful, much more than
what I initially expected.
The methodology was very effective. My fellow guests agreed that
the creation of thematic, geographic and systematic groups multiplied
effectiveness and helped to create synergy derived from such and
exchange of ideas and opinions. It was also an excellent mechanism
to generate a great deal of base information directly from the
top minds of São Paulo's scientific community.
SUGGESTIONS
Although this initial approach has been sucessfull, I believe
that it needs to be complemented with another workshop aimed toward
the integration of other sectors of the state community.
Scientists are providing the basic framework for the development
of a Biodiversity Conservation Programme, but commerce, goods
and services industry, government, and education should provide
feedback and steering to the products that will be generated.
Decision makers and value providers should ask the scientific
community for customized information products. They should be
asked: What biodiversity information products are needed to better
help your activities?.
One additional guest that should be considered in this "Communitiy
of Biodiversity Users Workshop" is Media. There should be
at least one top newsperson invited to witness and report on the
events. This could easily help develop awareness and collaboration
of the national society at large.
The inclusion of government and the private sector will guarantee
a continued support to an initiative that should be financially
backed by them and that, on the long run, will provide them an
endless source of revenues.
At the risk of narrowing too much the wide spectrum of applications
I will like to include the following hypothetical (and maybe simplistic)
examples:
- The Ecoturism industry, the largest growing sector in my country,
needs information about species diversity, natural history and
sustainable exploitation opportunities for activities like bird
and butterfly watching, hiking, diving, etc.
- Commerce needs textual and graphical illustration of native
wildlife.
- Industry, particularly chemical prospecting, can be greatly
aided by natural "clues" of chemical activity, relationships
and basic suystematic identity of organisms.
- Schools and Universities need actualized status reports and
studies of the local fauna and flora.
This is a small piece of the kind of list that should be developed
before starting the data capture and organization efforts.
However, before this can be done, this sector needs to be educated
in regards to the nature and implications of the preservation
od biological diversity. They need to be taught the ABC of biodiversity.
One mechanism, used successfully to prepare this past meeting,
can be extended to aid this goal: the Internet, particularly the
web site implemented by the Base de Dados Tropical.
Another recommendation, already incorporated by the Informatics
work group, is to develop an extensible but loose set of basic
fields and rules to integrate heterogeneous data sources. Do not
try to enforce a rigid, centralized database schema. Provide a
basic but extensively documented framework to the data providers,
that can be applied to all the required needs without major software
development efforts.
