The fifth round of funding from the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia (BIFA) programme will support nine new projects in 2020, focusing on mobilizing biodiversity data from collections and ecological monitoring in the region.
The call issued in November 2019 attracted a wide range of highly competitive proposals. The projects, selected after a rigorous evaluation process, involve teams from institutions in nine Asian countries, along with four partners from outside the region. When combining the total funding of €117,829 awarded with co-funding secured by the project teams, the total investment enabled by this round of BIFA exceeds €280,000.
2020 BIFA project grantees
| Project | Country of project lead | Funding from BIFA | Cofunding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digitizing and data basing of bee specimens in Thailand | Thailand | € 13,888 | € 13,888 |
| Enriching the Bhutan Biodiversity Portal through digitization and mobilization of specimen collections | Bhutan | € 7,952 | € 9,072 |
| Supporting conservation through mobilizing ecological data from Kalimantan, Indonesia | Indonesia | € 14,985 | € 4,828 |
| Mobilizing Indonesian butterfly collections at the Museum Zoologi Bogor (II) | Indonesia | € 14,953 | € 15,516 |
| Digitization of specimens at the University of the Philippines Los Baños Museum of Natural History | Philippines | € 14,992 | € 5,233 |
| Digitization of mycological collections in Nepal | Nepal | € 14,750 | € 8,500 |
| Mobilizing invertebrate monitoring data in South-East Asia | China | € 14,127 | € 81,102 |
| Using citizen science to study whales and dolphins in Vietnamese waters | Viet Nam | € 14,783 | € 14,585 |
| Cleaning and digitizing plant specimen records from Heilongjiang Province, China | China | € 7,399 | € 11,015 |
The projects are all beginning in July, and will be implemented by the end of 2021 at the latest. Each project has nominated at least one team member to take part in a virtual Data Mobilization Workshop for Asia aimed at sharing the key skills required for formatting and sharing data through the GBIF network, and growing the regional community of practice in biodiversity informatics.
The BIFA programme is managed by the GBIF Secretariat and funded by the Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan with the goal of filling data gaps and supporting biodiversity information capacity in Asia.