Now working from Cambridge in the UK, Dr Busby is coordinating a program of global data and exchange agreements among the world's major conservation, environmental and sustainable development organisations.
The Biodiversity Conservation Information System (BCIS) will initially form an information network based on data from 12 independent conservation-based organisations. All the participants to date are non-government organisations working in the domain of bio-diversity data -- information about the conservation status of plants and animals.
Information-sharing among agencies means more comprehensive assessments and conservation priorities and practices, for instance regarding the populations and locations of endangered species.
According to Dr Busby, BCIS is about providing information as a basis for decision-making, not just counting beetles and mapping rainforests.
"We are approaching this on a global level for international programs such as the UN Environment Program and looking to help countries set their priorities on a national level," Dr Busby said. "The New Zealand government, for example, might want to put their data into some sort of context. They might have half a dozen endangered species in their own region, but for all they know the species might be common in the next country."
Dr Busby said that to help identify endangered environments, information would be passed on to action-oriented organisations which could take the issues into the political arena.
"The BCIS concept is a challenge because although governments have signed the convention on biological diversity, they are not necessarily wildly excited about setting up integrated information systems," he said.
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