News
2 September 2025
Despite being one of the most megadiverse regions in the world, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) face persistent challenges in building robust, sustainable marine biodiversity data infrastructures. Economic constraints, fragmented data landscapes, and limited technical capacity prevent the region from realising its full potential in global biodiversity data initiatives and hinder informed conservation policies at local, national, regional and global levels.
“Strengthening the integrated management of marine biodiversity data and information in Latin America and Caribbean is crucial to showcase the rich natural capital of the region,” explains Martha Vides, Head of the Research Line on Inventories, Taxonomy and Species Biology at INVEMAR in Colombia and OBIS Colombia Node Manager. To address these challenges, OBIS Nodes from Latin America and the Caribbean answered a call to proposal from the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) with “OBIS-LAC”, an initiative aiming to advance data standardisation, interoperability, and open access practices across the region. POGO’s decision to fund OBIS-LAC was crucial to providing a steady start to seed the initiative. “This support is crucial for accelerating regional cooperation in the region, and boost ourt contributions to global biodiversity data platform, “ says Marco Zarate, a researcher at the CESIMAR in Argentina, and the OBIS Argentina Node Manager.
Thanks to the 10 000€ from POGO’s support, OBIS-LAC will take its first operational steps, with the goal to boost the region’s capacity to contribute to global biodiversity platforms, better align with international conservation efforts such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, as well as improve participation in major regional agreements, such as the Cartagena Convention. “The financial support from POGO will allow us to establish spaces in which to implement shared growth strategies, helping to fill skill gaps and boost technical capabilities in data management across the region,” says Erika Montoya, a scientific researcher at INVEMAR in Colombia and the OBIS Colombia Data Manager. OBIS-LAC is directly built on the momentum initiated by the “OBIS Network For Latin America and the Caribbean”, the very first regional OBIS network, officially launched in March 2025.
OBIS-LAC will deliver two main key components:
A regional workshop, bringing together OBIS Node data managers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia to co-develop the OBIS-LAC Action Plan, map capabilities, and set strategic priorities.
An operational capacity-building training programme, focusing on data quality control, publishing protocols, and best practices for interoperability, designed for replication and adaptation in national contexts.
With a focus on capacity development, equitable participation, and developing new partnerships with the private sector, OBIS-LAC contributes directly to POGO’s strategic goals across Latin America and the Caribbean. “This financial support is materializing the collaboration efforts that OBIS Nodes of the Latin America and the Caribbean region have initiated organically,” explains Carolina Peralta, a researcher at the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) of the University of South Florida - College of Marine Science and the OBIS Caribbean Node Manager.
“Thanks to POGO’s support, the OBIS-LAC can work to strengthen data integration and collaboration, close observation gaps and boost the region’s contributions to global data biodiversity platforms.”
The OBIS-LAC team is sincerely grateful to POGO for making this first of many steps forward possible. You can read more about the OBIS Network for Latin America and the Caribbean here.