International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

Overview
The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program
(CBMP), an IPY “cluster program” (no.133) was initiated
in 2003–2004 as an international network of scientists
and local resource-users working together to enhance
Arctic biodiversity monitoring to improve detection,
understanding and reporting of significant trends in
biodiversity and to inform management decisions
(Strategy, 2004; Zöckler and Harrison, 2004). The
CBMP was established as the cornerstone program
of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF)
Working Group of the Arctic Council. Launched in
2005 and currently led by Canada, the CBMP has over
60 global partners, 33 of which are Arctic biodiversity
monitoring networks connected to the CBMP. Many
of these networks received substantial support from
IPY and became integrated parts of its activities (CAFF
2006a,b; Fleener et al., 2004; Russel and Kofinas,
2004; Petersen et al., 2004). Arctic Nations currently
spend over $500M monitoring biodiversity, yet there
is an urgent need to improve coordination, data
management and sharing.
The CBMP takes an ecosystem-based management
approach and operates as a network of networks
by coordinating existing species, habitat and sitebased
networks (Fig. 3.9-1). The CBMP has started the
establishment of four Expert Monitoring Groups—
Freshwater (1), Marine (2), Coastal (3) and Terrestrial
(4) 1 —that were tasked with developing long-term
integrated monitoring plans for the major Arctic
systems: marine, freshwater, coastal and terrestrial,
respectively. Furthermore, a special focus group is
currently developing a protected-areas monitoring
framework and another community-monitoring
PA R T T H R E E : I PY OBSERVING SYS T E M S , T H E I R L E G AC Y A N D DATA M A N AG E M E N T
3.9 The Circumpolar Biodiversity
Monitoring Program (CBMP)
Lead Authors:
Michael Svoboda, Michael Gill, Tom Barry and Kathleen Crane
Contributing Authors:
Ben Collen, Joseph Culp, Andrea Friedman, Nikolaus Gantner, Willem
Goedkoop, Victoria Gofman, Reidar Hindrum, David Irons, Jonathan Loh, Louise
McRae, Aevar Petersen, Jim Reist, Don Russell, Michael Simpkins, Risa Smith,
Dag Vongraven, Fred Wrona and Christoph Zockler
Reviewers:
Kjell Danell and Terry Callaghan
guidance group was called for in 2009. Also, the
CBMP has begun the development of coordinated
reporting and outreach tools, including a suite of
Arctic biodiversity indicators, as well as a web-based
data management and depiction tool (data portal) for
biodiversity data.
The CBMP was strategically linked to a number of
other Arctic biodiversity conservation-related efforts.
It is a part of the Global Earth Observations-Biodiversity
Observation Network (the Arctic-BON) and a
member of the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership
(2010 BIP), a global network aimed to improve the
tracking and reporting of Convention on Biological
Diversity indicators. The CBMP has been identified as
the biodiversity component of the Sustaining Arctic
Observing Networks (Chapter 3.8) initiative and was
also closely linked with other Arctic Council initiatives
in protecting arctic biodiversity. The CAFF Working
Group supported the Convention on Biological Diversity
of 1993 (CBD) and its so-called ‘2010 Biodiversity
Target’ (www.cbd.int/2010-target/), 2 and charged
CBMP to monitor the Arctic region’s progress towards
this global initiative to arrest the biodiversity loss.
Across the Arctic biodiversity conservation community
there is a wide range of data sources, formats and
subjects. As a network of networks, the CBMP seeks
to provide universal access to these resources through
its publications (the Arctic Species Trend Index) and online
data portal (the Arctic Data Portal). The CBMP has
asked partner programs within the Arctic Council as
well as other organizations to contribute to its data
collection efforts.
During IPY years, the CBMP was and continues to
o b s e r v I n g s Y s t e m s a n d d a t a m a n a g e m e n t 423