The Clearing-house Mechanism and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; is there a Common Future? Pasi Laihonen 1 , Jukka Salo 1 and Risto Kalliola 2 Abstract Biodiversity information is among the most interesting items within the domain of envi- ronmental informatics. As the ownership of biodiversity resources is a matter of substan- tial economic expectations, a number of international biodiversity information initiatives have emerged. Premises and perspectives of two major initiatives are reviewed in our paper. The global biodiversity Clearing-house Mechanism established by the Convention on Biological Diversity focuses on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, whereas the Global Biodiversity Information Facility emphasises economic growth and social outcomes. The Clearing-house Mechanism has progressed slowly, as only 50 out of 181 parties of the Convention have national web sites on the Internet. National biodi- versity reporting of the parties is also inadequate. Cooperation and division of labour is seen as a vital necessity for both initiatives. The Clearing-house Mechanism has good facilities to focus on commanding the entire information process, while the Global Bio- diversity Information Facility has the best prospects in biodiversity data processing. 1. Introduction Ever since the Rio convention in 1992 diversity of life has been understood as a natural resource in international policies as well as within the scientific community. Due to this, a substantial number of international biodiversity information initiatives and networks have been established (see e.g. Soberon 1999, Bisby 2000, Edwards et al. 2000). From the point of view of the ownership of biodiversity resources, the world can be divided into two important categories of countries; those who possess biologically rich areas, and those who own information about biodiversity. Surpris- ingly, countries rich in biodiversity, the so called megadiversity countries (Sa- rukhn/Dirzo 2001), often lack detailed information about their biodiversity re- sources, whereas countries holding most of the world’s biodiversity information are usually situated in biodiversity-poor areas. 1 Department of Biology, University of Turku, FIN-20014, Finland 2 Department of Geography, University of Turku, FIN-20014, Finland EnviroInfo 2002 (Wien) Environmental Communication in the Information Society - Proceedings of the 16th Conference Copyright © IGU/ISEP, Wien 2002. ISBN: 3-9500036-7-3