science, health & technology

On February 7 the presentation at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute was more about institutional structures than scientific research, and more of a plea for information than a sharing thereof.

The Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) is a World Bank-backed project which has its origins in the 1996 Summit of the Americas in Santa Cruz, Bolivia and exists under the framework of the Organization of American States. It has been set up at the City of Knowledge (the former Fort Clayton) for about a year, and aims to set up an Internet-based forum for the governments, corporations and non-governmental organizations of 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Why? After all, there are a number of other biological databases, mainly based in academia, that are much farther along.

As IABIN's Iván Valdespino explained, nations in the Americas don't tend to work cooperatively, so there isn't much information sharing, but there's a need to deal with certain conservation issues regionally.

So why not build upon and use the existing databases? Well, Valdespino said, the IABN is not duplicating the work that other people are doing." They are gathering information and making it available, with "a major emphasis" on creating interfaces among various other networks.

But several of these very networks are doing just that. Why IABIN?

Valdespino explained that there is a need for governments to have the information and tools to make better decisions about problems like invasive species. IABIN aims to make this information available to "decision makers." It will be a "distributive network" for "biodiversity information users."

So "better decisions" according to the standards of the World Bank, whose decisions have impoverished most of the Americas? So "decision makers," as in those who would promote the pouring of caustic chemicals into the soil for gold mines that destroy the water supplies of nearby farming communities, but not groups of campesinos who need to decide whether and how to protest? A distributive network for which biodiversity information users?

The information will be "available to everyone," IABIN's Vincent Abreu said.

But this reporter, and the others in the audience --- almost all of them scientists with a relationship with the Smithsonian --- had many questions.

"You have access," Abreu qualified, "but governments or other information providers can limit who gets it."

As in, someone who's working an archaeological site doesn't need to give its location away to huaqueros. As in, someone who wants to copyright the products of her research and sell it rather than give it away can limit its dissemination. As in, Osama's boys might get denied a close-up view of the Panama Canal's security systems that might otherwise be had in a satellite view of the area's flora.

And if the some government wants to lie to citizens in order to support some boondoggle that it has been bribed to approve, it would presumably be able to play certain information control games with IABIN for that purpose, too.

But Abreu added that "in reality you have access to all kinds of things," and showed the crowd some of the South America-wide ecosystem mapping that IABIN has available. He also mentioned grants to put information that is not in a format useful for the Internet into digital form.

"The key thing," Abreu concluded, "is the creation of communities of experts."

But isn't that what the Smithsonian has been doing for all of these years?

So what will we really get, especially once the World Bank grant expires, as it will in a few years --- a really cool, unique and useful online tool, or just another unremarkable international bureaucracy? This early in the game, it's just not possible to know. In the end, the question will not be answered in a presentation at the Tupper Auditorium, but by what we whom the World Bank does not count as decision makers will be able to find online, in comparison to everything else.

Also in this section:
COPEG sterile screw worm fly plant nears completion
CR-AVE: verifying satellite imagery
The global threat of counterfeit medicines
Using invertebrates to measure rivers' health
Bio-database work underway at City of Knowledge
Archaeologists use NASA satellites to find ancient Mayan site

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