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The Forgotten Data: A Rather Short but Deep Story of Museums and Libraries in HKH and Similar Information Sources in Support of the Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF.org) and Model-Predictions for Improved Conservation Management

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Hindu Kush-Himalaya Watersheds Downhill: Landscape Ecology and Conservation Perspectives

Abstract

Many wealthy nations invest into research expeditions and collections world-wide. The Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region has received a lot of those activities over the last centuries but rarely gets anything in return while the conservation status quickly declines. Many data are lost and certainly not shared with the global community! Here I looked at publicly available online data from GBIF.org and interpret the amount of data and proportions held outside of the respected 17 HKH nations. For the public data available I find up to 44% of the HKH data are hosted ‘outside’, and many of the dominant national data holders are not even online or digitized, and thus not showing up in online searches and keeping the data and information exclusively for themselves for their own benefit. Nepal and Bhutan are assessed in detail for this pattern, and confirming that the GBIF data trends described here are likely underestimates of reality. Western-dominated taxonomies are widely disputed, and lack of geo-referencing and altitude accuracy make it even worse for using the data. The current pattern shows that access to data, and use ability, are currently not equally nor fair distributed and that just a few wealthy and powerful nations dominate and control the online information, e.g. to be used for commercial applications and for their own commercial publications. It raises questions of a mandatory globally free, fair and equal information exchange, data and specimen re-patriation as well as on compensations during the so-called era of progress, fairness and globalization in the Anthropocene arguably ongoing for many decades already.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the late Larry Spears with GBIF, ICIMOD, E. Spehn and GMBA, NCEAS, co-workers and everybody who shared data throughout any medium, library and online. Madan Suwal is greatly thanked for helping with some GIF queries (in R).

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  1. -EWHALE lab- Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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  1. Falk Huettmann
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Correspondence to Falk Huettmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Third Pole Conservancy, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Ganga Ram Regmi

  2. -EWHALE Lab- Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Huettmann, F. (2020). The Forgotten Data: A Rather Short but Deep Story of Museums and Libraries in HKH and Similar Information Sources in Support of the Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF.org) and Model-Predictions for Improved Conservation Management. In: Regmi, G., Huettmann, F. (eds) Hindu Kush-Himalaya Watersheds Downhill: Landscape Ecology and Conservation Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36275-1_25

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