BIOTA/FAPESP The Biodiversity Virtual Institute: a Brazilian model for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use research programmes
Carlos Alfredo Joly
Departamento de Botânica/IB Univ. Estadual de Campinas/UNICAMP C.P. 6109, 13083-970 Campinas/SP, Brasil. E.Mail:
cjoly@unicamp.br
Erica Speglich
Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental/CRIA - Av. Romeu Tórtima, 388, 13084-520 Campinas/SP, Brasil. E.Mail:
erica@cria.org.br
Undoubtedly, biological diversity possesses a priceless intrinsic value. Each species is the unique result of the evolutionary process, as is the relationship among species and of these with the environment. Biological diversity also possesses value for the services that it renders (for instance, maintenance of the hydrological cycle, pollinator's populations, etc.) and for its scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic meaning.
But it is important to keep in mind that biological diversity has also an extremely high economic value. The growing world market of biotech products is estimated in approximately US$ 400 billion. In spite of occupying the top of the list of biodiversity rich countries, with approximately 20% of all species of the Earth (7.000 species of vertebrates, 55.000 species of higher plants, 2.000.000 of species of invertebrate, and an unknown amount of species of microorganisms), the Brazilian share in this market is still very low, something around US$ 500 million.
The economic potential of the sustainable use of the Brazilian biodiversity is incalculable! How many times have we heard this statement? However, it seems that this "potential" never becomes effective. WHY?
In spite of highly reliable, the information available on our biological patrimony is generally fragmented, disperse, of difficult access and, consequently, underused. Besides, as a consequence of the lack of an updated cartographic base, the location of the points of collection of basic information, as the inventories of species, is usually inaccurate.
The great challenge is to systematise the collection, the storage and the integration of this information, using tools such as remote sensing, geoprocessing and bioinformatics.
Created officially in March, 1999, the Research Program on Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Biodiversity of the State of São Paulo, named BIOTA/FAPESP - The Virtual Biodiversity Institute (www.biota.org.br) is the result of a prior period of three years of articulation of the Scientific Community. Since the program has been officially established, the scientific community has been working in an articulated manner on studies concerning the characterisation, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity of the State of São Paulo, with the support of the Scientific Director of FAPESP (José Fernando Perez). The Program is based on the premises preconized by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB).
After five years, there are 42 major research projects being developed within the framework of the BIOTA/FAPESP Program. All major public Universities (USP, UNICAMP, UNESP, UFSCar), some private universities (PUC, UNAERP, UNISANTOS) research Institutes (such as the Instituto de Botânica, Instituto Florestal, Instituto Geológico, INPE), EMBRAPA Centers, and NGOs (such as Instituto Socioambiental, Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, Conservation International and CRIA) are taking part of the Program. Considering only researchers linked with these institutions within the State of São Paulo, there are approximately 400 with at least a PhD level, plus 300 graduate students. There are another 80 collaborators from other Brazilian states and approximately 50 collaborators from abroad.
The common objective of the BIOTA/FAPESP research projects is to study the biodiversity (using the broadest definition of biodiversity as stated in the CDB) of the state of São Paulo seeking: a) to understand the processes that generate and maintain biodiversity, as well as those that can result in its deleterious reduction; b) to standardise sampling, gathering and making information relevant to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use available to decision makers; c) to ensure fast and free public access to this information; d) to improve teaching standards on subjects related to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
The research projects linked to the Program are being developed to increase the academic knowledge on the State of São Paulo's biodiversity and to simultaneously produce results that can be used to improve State policies on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. For this purpose, it was necessary to associate projects aimed at improving biological knowledge with projects seeking the economic use of species.
All projects are linked through the Environmental Information System of the BIOTA/FAPESP (sinbiota.cria.org.br/), developed by the Reference Centre on Environmental Information (CRIA) in collaboration with the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). This system is integrated with an electronic map base (scale 1:50.000) of the State (sinbiota.cria.org.br/atlas), which was digitised by the Forest Institute of São Paulo. All information is freely available on the Internet and is starting to be used by the State branches in charge of planning its economic development.
After establishing a standard protocol for the biological material collected within the frame of the BIOTA/FAPESP Programme, it was of paramount importance to recover the enormous amount of information deposited in biological collections (historic data) of the State of São Paulo. Focusing on this specific target, the Programme stimulated and is supporting the project "Distributed Information System for Biological Collections: Integrating Species Analyst and SinBiota (FAPESP)" (splink.cria.org.br/). Twelve collections (3 herbaria, 2 acari, 3 fish, 1 algae and 3 microorganism collections) are engaged on the first phase of this project.
With historical data and standardised sampling associated to a map base, there are a number of tools that may be developed. At the moment we are working in collaboration with the University of Kansas on geographic distribution models using GARP (Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Production).
An enormous task to be addressed concerns authoritative taxonomic information. This is fundamental for data input and for searching purposes. There are a number of international initiatives that are aiming at implementing a complete catalogue of valid names (including synonyms and common names) and the Biota/Fapesp information system intends to collaborate with these initiatives. Examples are GBIF, and the Catalogue of Names (www.gbif.org), Species 2000 (www.sp2000.org) and ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (www.itis.usda.gov).
Last, but not least, the BIOTA/FAPESP Programme launched an electronic peer reviewed journal, BIOTA NEOTROPICA (www.biotaneotropica.org.br) to publish research results relevant to biodiversity characterisation, conservation and sustainable use in the Neotropical region, obtained within the framework of the BIOTA/FAPESP Program or not.
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