Tim Hirsch's Blog (8)

The Secretariat of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), located in Copenhagen, Denmark, is seeking a dynamic Science Writer, to help communicate the value of GBIF’s work to key audiences.

Among the tasks of the Science Writer will be to:

• Ensure consistency of language and messaging across GBIF publications and platforms, based on needs and audiences identified in the forthcoming GBIF Communications Strategy;
• Develop and maintain dynamic news…

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Copenhagen / Brasília  – Brazil has become the latest country to join the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), dedicated to promoting free and open access to biodiversity data.

 

The formal step of becoming a GBIF Participant was the signature of the GBIF Memorandum of Understanding by the Brazilian Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Marco Antonio Raupp.

 

The MoU commits a…

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Innovative use of data accessible through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) may help to identify areas of high cultural value, based on plants used in traditional medicine by Aboriginal people in Australia.

The Customary Medicinal Knowledgebase (CMKb), based at Macquarie University, is teaming up with the…

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Ask the average, well-informed punter to name the most significant current environmental threat to human societies, and she or he is very likely to answer climate change. Indeed, it is common for people to use climate change and the environment interchangeably.

As long ago as 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) concluded that climate change was just one of five principal drivers behind threats to the benefits we derive from…

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From tomorrow (Saturday 11th Dec) until Wednesday I will be attending a scientific conference in the town of Bragança Paulista, organised by FAPESP, the public body that funds scientific research in the state of São Paulo - which contributes about half of all the published scientific papers in Brazil. The theme is "Getting post-2010 Biodiversity Targets…

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(for original posting see http://www.timhirsch.org/1/post/2010/11/-slaughter-of-the-sirens.html)



The record-breaking drought in the Amazon basin has led to "uncontrolled" hunting of one of the world's most bizarre and gentle aquatic mammals, the threatened Amazonian Manatee (Trichechus… Continue

Anyone who follows Brazilian public discussion over a long period will

be familiar with the Amazon conspiracy theory. To outsiders it seems

bizarre enough to be laughed off. However, its persistence and resonance

with a large section of public opinion (and political elites) makes it

no laughing matter for those Brazilians earnestly trying to move the

country to a new mindset regarding this environmental superpower's

unrivalled biological riches. Now a version… Continue