InforMEA was launched during the Second Steering Committee Meeting of the MEA Information and Knowledge Management Initiative, which is supported by UNEP. The meeting is bringing together approximately 25 representatives from MEAs, UN agencies and observers in Glion, Switzerland, from 14-16 June 2011, where participants also will  brainstorm possibilities for collaboration related to online reporting, an MEA college, and extensions of the InforMEA (UN Information Portal on MEAs) interoperability project.

In a keynote speech at the launch, John Scanlon, Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), noted that InforMEA provides a useful and tangible project that seeks to deliver information that parties want. He emphasized the need to give coherent expression to the entire body of international environmental law and to show how MEAs are relevant to sustainable development in the lead-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20). Scanlon said this portal will contribute to these efforts.

Maria Louisa Silva, Executive Secretary of the Barcelona Convention (Mediterranean Action Plan), also offered a keynote speech. She highlighted the importance of innovation and the development of linkages among conventions, and noted that these activities require information exchange.

To announce the launch, UNEP and the MEAs prepared joint press releases. [IISD RS Sources] [InforMEA Webportal] [UNEP Press Release] [Ramsar Convention Press Release] [CMS Press Release]

source: http://uncsd.iisd.org/news/unep-meas-launch-informea-webportal/

Please feel free to share FREE ACCESS to ITC’s Market Analysis Tools with your colleagues or partners in developing countries by forwarding this email message.

ITC’s Market Analysis Tools offer the possibility of visualizing data with tables graphs and maps. Here is a brief summary:

§ Trade Map: an international trade statistics database covering over 5300 products of the Harmonized System, and up to 15,000 products at national tariff line level for over 220 countries and territories. The yearly data for 2009, both direct and mirror data, are available for more than 200 countries or territories. 70 countries have reported their 2010 Q4, representing almost two thirds of world trade. Monthly data is as current as March 2011 for some countries. Trade Map presents indicators on export performance, international demand, alternative markets and the role of competitors from both the product and country perspectives.

§ Market Access Map: a database providing tariff information (customs duties) for 184 countries, incorporating regional and bilateral preferences arising out of bilateral and regional trade agreements. It also allows users to analyse the protection of any geographic grouping and sectoral aggregation. In addition it offers the possibility of simulating tariff reductions using various negotiation formulae.

New! In the second half of 2011, Market Access Map will be replaced by a new integrated application offering comprehensive solutions for analysing market access measures worldwide, including tariffs, non-tariff measures (compulsory regulations) and trade data.

.       Investment Map: tracks global trends through a statistical database detailed by sector and by country (ISIC nomenclature). It is the only web-based platform to provide such detailed information on FDI flows and stock combined with trade and tariff data, as well as with information on more than 130,000 foreign affiliates located in developing countries. Investment Map country coverage increased significantly in 2010, showing detailed FDI data on about 100 economies.

§ Standards Map: a recently launched web-based tool that centralizes and disseminates information on private (or voluntary) standards and related research material to strengthen the capacity of producers, exporters and buyers to participate in sustainable production and trade.

To make the most effective use of our powerful tools, we also offer a complete self-guided training facility with video tutorials, downloadable presentations, practical exercise and user guides to help our users master the important features of the tools such as performance indicators, bubble graphs and maps: www.intracen.org/marketanalysis/DistanceLearning.aspx

Should you require any additional information, please contact: marketanalysis@intracen.org

Wiley Open Access will provide authors wishing to publish their research outcomes in an open access journal with a range of new high quality publications which meet the requirements of funding organizations and institutions where these apply.

“The development of Wiley Open Access is an example of our commitment to offer authors the widest possible choice in publishing with Wiley”, said Steve Miron, Senior Vice President, Wiley-Blackwell.  He added, “Wiley has a strong history of innovation in journal publishing and we see this as a natural extension of our service to our learned society partners, authors, and the scholarly community in its broadest sense”.

The new journals are being launched in collaboration with a group of international professional and scholarly societies with which Wiley currently partners.  Each journal will appoint an Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board responsible for ensuring that all articles are rigorously peer-reviewed, and each journal will be offered with the full functionality of Wiley Online Library.

The new Wiley Open Access journal Brain and Behavior will publish open access research across neurology, neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology.  Brain and Behavior’s newly appointed Editor-in-Chief, Andrei V. Alexandrov, Professor of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, comments:

“With the launch of Brain and Behavior, the Editorial Board and I, along with the support of many international societies, will offer the research community a high quality peer-reviewed journal that meets the needs of those authors who wish to publish their work in an open access environment. I am delighted to be working with Wiley to deliver this important new service.”

Professor Allen Moore, University of Exeter and newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of Ecology and Evolution comments:

“I am excited to be involved with this new open access journals initiative.  Ecology and Evolution will deliver rapid decisions and fast publication of research in all areas of ecology, evolution and conservation science.  By working in collaboration with leading societies to deliver open access to all, this new journal offers authors an ideal place to publish their work quickly to the broadest possible audience.”

Professor Geoff Hanlon, Honorary President of Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) comments:

“The new Wiley Open Access journal in microbiology will deliver something of real value, with in-depth peer-review, fast publishing times and availability to the worldwide research community.  We are looking forward to partnering with Wiley to support this new high-quality open access journal for the microbiology community.”

Wiley Open Access journals will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.  A publication fee will be payable by authors on acceptance of their articles.  Wiley will introduce a range of new payment schemes to enable academic and research institutions, funders, societies, and corporations to actively support their researchers and members who wish to publish in Wiley Open Access journals.

More information is available at www.wileyopenaccess.com

See : http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data

Note that the Globally Threatened Birds are available from the Birdlife Data Zone.

The 2010 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species contains assessments for almost 56,000 species, of which about 28,000 have spatial data. This spatial data collection provided below is for most of the comprehensivley assessed taxonomic groups such as amphibians, mammals, threatened birds, reef-building corals, groupers, wrasses, angelfish, butterflyfish, seasnakes, seagrasses and mangroves. Spatial data is also provided for many of the reptile species that have been assessed. Other groups will be added to this collection once they are mapped. It is important to note that some species listed as Data Deficient are not mapped. These data are made freely available to the public to help inform conservation planning and other decision making processes. For more information about the assessment process, please see the IUCN Red List website (http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/assessment-process).

The data are held in shapefiles, the ESRI native format and contain the known range of each species. Ranges are depicted as polygons. DBF files accompanying each polygon contain taxonomic information, and contain information on distribution status, sources and other details about the maps (see metadata document).  To limit the size of the shapefiles that are available to download, the higher taxonomy is not included in the data sets, only the genus and species name. The higher taxonomy including the current Red List Category information is available under each section, in excel format (these are the same data you would get if you ran a search on the Red List web site and exported the results as a CSV file), and you are able to join this file with the shapefiles when downloaded.

For ease of distribution and downloading the data is divided by taxonomic groups.

The data is available both in ESRI File Geodatabase format and the ESRI Shapefile format and is held in geographical coordinates. Please note that the files are large, and download times could be quite lengthy.

While this data is made freely available to the public, please note that unfortunately we cannot provide technical support for use of the data in analyses or general GIS support.

Data Links

Mammals
Birds
Groupers

Amphibians
Angelfish
Wrasses

Corals
Butterflyfish
Mangroves

Reptiles
Parrotfish
Seagrasses

Mammals

The ranges are available as a single data set (file Geodatabase) for all mammals or broken out into smaller data sets as shapefiles. The ranges are broken out by grouping families containing predominantly marine and terrestrial species.

The terrestrial file includes all mammals, excluding species in the families Otariidae, Phocidae and Odobenidae (i.e. all seals, sea lions and walrus), Balaenidae, Balaenopteridae, Delphinidae, Eschrichtidae, Iniidae, Monodontidae, Neobalaenidae, Phocoenidae, Physteridae, Platanistidae, and Ziphiidae (all whales, dolphins and porpoises), and everything in the Order Sirenia (manatees and dugongs). The latter families are included in the Marine shapefile.

All mammals – 2010 (zip file, 365.7 MB)

Mammals – terrestrial (zip file, 374 MB)

Mammals – marine (zip file, 356.4 MB)

See metadata document for further information.

Mammals – full taxonomy and Red List status (note that there are more species in this list than are mapped and the list does not include subspecies or subpopulations). The list presented as a Red List search result with links to each species fact sheet can also be found by clicking on this permalink:http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/search/link/4cc84a88-1fd94435.

source of this article: http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data

The database is user-driven, and users can upload, store and manage datasets by creating personal profiles. The site already contains more than 8500 separate disease records.

The database was originally established in 2000 by NOAA and UNEP-WCMC, and was re-assessed in 2009 in light of the information needs and priorities of researchers, practitioners and managers working with coral disease. The new-look GCDD was launched in Samoa last week at the 25th General Meeting of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) (8-12 November, 2010). To visit the website, go to www.coraldisease.org.

By Kaitlin Mara on 5 November 2010 @ 3:47 pm

Influential copyright scholar Larry Lessig yesterday issued a call for the World Intellectual Property Organization to lead an overhaul of the copyright system which he says does not and never will make sense in the digital environment.
A functioning copyright system must provide the incentives needed for creative professionals, but must also protect the freedoms necessary for scientific research and amateur creativity to flourish.

In the digital environment, copyright has failed at both, said Lessig.

Reading, lending, or reselling a book is not “fair use” – it is free use. They are unregulated acts.

-Larry Lessig

“And its failure is not an accident,” he said. “It’s implicit in the architecture of copyright as we inherited it. It does not make sense in a digital environment.”

The copyright system will “never work on the internet. It’ll either cause people to stop creating or it’ll cause a revolution,” said Lessig, citing a growing system of copyright “abolitionism” online in response to a worrying tendency to criminalise the younger generation.

“If and only if WIPO [the World Intellectual Property Organization] leads in this debate will we have a chance” at fixing the copyright system, he said.

Lessig spoke at the 4-5 November WIPO Global Meeting on Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities – Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age ^[1]. This event is a part of the ongoing implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda. Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School.

He also spoke on video with Intellectual Property Watch after his speech, which can be seen below.

Larry Lessig speaking to Intellectual Property Watch
at the World Intellectual Property Organization, 4 November 2010.

Copyright Online: What has Changed?

Reading a book in physical space is unregulated, said Lessig: reading, lending, or reselling a book is not “fair use” – it is free use. They are unregulated acts.

But online, every use is a copy. This is “not about a generation that can’t respect the rules, it’s a problem in the design of the system.”

“Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the copyright law,” Lessig said, quoting University of Michigan Law School Professor Jessica Litman.

“At the turn of the century, US copyright law was technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand, but it didn’t apply to very many people or very many things.… Ninety years later, the US copyright law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand; more importantly, it touches everyone and everything,” Litman wrote ^[2].

Francis Gurry, WIPO director general, said in his opening speech that the technical infrastructure of the digital environment is both key to the description of what is lacking about copyright and key to the solution.

“An idea whose time has come” is a global database of repertoire, which called “an essential piece of global infrastructure or as an essential global public good.” This was mentioned frequently in subsequent panels at the event.

WIPO Blue Sky Commission

Creative Commons licences, a suite of licences that build on copyright law by allowing a user to select allowed freedoms, have helped but are not enough, said Lessig.

WIPO needs to form a “blue sky commission,” a “group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense.”

This architecture must be: simple – “if it’s going to regulate 15-year-olds it should be something that 15-year-olds can understand”; and targeted – regulation makes sense in some areas, such as protecting professionals, but not in others, such as in amateur remixing. It also must be effective, and realistic in consideration of “actual human behaviour.”

This realism involves acknowledging what has changed since the advent of the internet, and also what has not.

For all of human history, Lessig said, human culture was “read-write.” That is, people participated in the creation and recreation of culture. The 20th century has been unique in human culture, because the development of technologies of broadcasting and vinyl records produced an environment which enabled “efficient consumption, but inefficient amateur production.” This created a world that was “read only,” a “passive, consuming culture.” The internet has brought back that read-write environment.

The war on piracy has been going on for 10 years. “For some, the response to a totally failed war is to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously.” But this will only fuel the copyright “abolitionist” movement, said Lessig, adding he was “against extremisms, because both lead to destruction of core value of copyright.”

“We are not going to kill these technologies,” Lessig said. “We can’t stop the kids’ creativity, only drive it underground. [We] can’t make our kids passive, we can only make them pirates.”

Larry Lessig and Francis Gurry speaking at WIPO.

Related Articles:

• Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig ^[3]
• Copyright System Must “Adapt Or Perish,” WIPO Director Says ^[4]
• Should WIPO Lead Creation Of A Global Repertoire Database? ^[5]

Categories: Access to Knowledge,Copyright Policy,Education/ R&D/ Innovation,Enforcement,English,IP Policies,Information and Communications Technology/ Broadcasting,Themes,Venues,WIPO

Article printed from Intellectual Property Watch: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog

URL to article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/05/lessig-calls-for-wipo-to-lead-overhaul-of-copyright-system/

URLs in this post:

[1] Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities – Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age: http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2010/wipo_cr_lic_ge_10/index.html

[2] Litman wrote: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jdlitman/papers/read.htm

[3] Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/12/global-copyright-reform-a-view-from-the-south-in-response-to-lessig/

[4] Copyright System Must “Adapt Or Perish,” WIPO Director Says: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/03/15/copyright-system-must-%e2%80%9cadapt-or-perish%e2%80%9d-wipo-director-says/

[5] Should WIPO Lead Creation Of A Global Repertoire Database?: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/22/should-wipo-lead-creation-of-global-database-of-music-repertoire/

[6] : http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/?p=13210

Click here to print.

The A to Z guide is an online resource to provide clear, concise and relevant information about various areas important for biodiversity conservation ranging from World Heritage Sites to Key Biodiversity Areas, which can be used by all sectors including business, government and environmental agencies. 

This guide has been prepared by UNEP-WCMC, in partnership with the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Complete World Development Report Online is now available free online at http://wdronline.worldbank.org where you will find every page of every World Development Report published by the World Bank since the first report was released in 1978.  It’s a free, open access product as part of the new open agenda at the Bank.

Use the following tools to quickly and easily search content across, within, and related to WDRs:

Browse by Title – find any report by its title and year.

Browse by Topic – find reports pertaining to a specific development topic, ranging from agriculture, education, and the environment to infrastructure, trade and poverty reduction.

World Bank Data – access a variety of World Bank datasets, including the World Development Indicators, via data.worldbank.org

Regions – refer to this guide for an overview of how the World Bank categorizes countries by region and income group

Related Content – access World Development Report background papers going back to 2005.

Searching – use a simple Search to carry out a full-text search across all reports; use the Advanced Search option to search any combination of full text, region, topic, and title.

Using the latest satellite images, users can pinpoint individual protected areas – such as national parks or marine reserves – and zoom in for information on endangered species, native plant life or types of terrain.

Protected Planet also offers visitors the opportunity to upload photographs of their trips to protected areas, write travelogues of what they saw and experienced for Wikipedia and recommend places of interest nearby—information that can be shared through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

click here for the BBC coverage on protectedplanet.net .

Protectedplanet.net applies an innovative, ‘Web 2.0’ approach to conservation and will be a powerful tool to help monitor future biodiversity targets. With half a million photos already on the site, protectedplanet.net has the potential to supply vast amounts of biodiversity information to the global community and, most importantly, to prove that it has never been easier for one person to make a difference to conservation.

This site is a free online social platform for professional interaction in the scope of GBIF: collaborative projects, discussions, sharing of information and expertise, announcements, mentoring, etc.

ommunity.gbif.org

The site is open to GBIF delegations, Nodes, technicians, biodiversity data publishers and users, and everyone interested in Biodiversity Informatics.

Visit the site now, create your account and start networking! Invite your colleagues and contacts to also join the site and benefit from the collaboration tools available in the site: work groups, (micro)blogs, community news, online chat, file and image sharing and much more!

You can also check the GBIF website for a description of the site and to access a quick guide with an overview of its features.

NOTE: The site interface is available in English, Spanish and French.