From BIOTASP to Internet 2

The discussions addressed issues such as the complexity and scope of the theme conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, the high fragmentation of available information about the State´s biota, the lack of updated field maps, and the lack of policies that would stop and revert the trend of habitat and species destruction. Another aspect that was largely discussed referred to the distance between researchers that hold and continue generating quality scientific and technical information about biodiversity and the agencies that propose or are responsible for implementing policies concerning conservation and/or sustainable use of the State´s natural resources.
What should be done? How can this situation be altered? How can one contribute to alter this scenario without losing our main characteristic which is producing high quality science? All were willing to cooperate, to work in favor of a project that was still vague, without a definite format, volunteering part of their time and capacity in the development of an idea involving FAPESP in a great research project on Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity. BIOTASP was born.

Throughout the three subsequent years, the BIOTASP Coordination Group published a series "Biodiversity of the State of São Paulo: synthesis of the knowledge at the end of the 20th century", which synthesized the knowledge available about São Paulo´s biota and the existing infrastructure for in situ and ex situ conservation. The Group also promoted the historical Workshop of Serra Negra and organized the scientific community around a group of thematic projects articulated through common objectives. In March, 1999 began the Program BIOTA/FAPESP - The Virtual Institute of Biodiversity.

The Program BIOTA/FAPESP, which began as an initiative of the scientific community, represents, without any doubt, a landmark between the necessary step of inventorying São Paulo´s Biota and a research program aimed at conservation and sustainable use of this biodiversity. In a program with this aim, it was necessary not only to continue the work of describing and cataloging species, but also to develop research projects that encompass structural and functional aspects of biodiversity, spatial and temporal distribution of organisms, and the relations between its components at the different organizational levels, and also the valorization of biodiversity, trying to establish links between services and products of biological diversity and productive systems.

With the creation of the Program, the thematic projects began together with the development of tools to integrate the data collected by the projects that are part of the Virtual Institute of Biodiversity. These tools, a textual database and a digitized map base (scale 1:50,000) were recently integrated by the Environmental Information System of the Program BIOTA/FAPESP - SinBiota.

Five years latter, a retrospective analysis shows the success of a unique experience, the creation and implementation of the Program BIOTA/FAPESP. The functionality of the integrating tools developed by the Program makes us believe that in the near future, this program may be reproduced in other states and regions of the country. Ideally, in a few years time we will have many "Biotas" that, interconnected will result in Biota-Brazil. The creation process of BIOTA/FAPESP, however, is difficult to reproduce, as it is a result of a maturing process of the scientific community of São Paulo State around the premises of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The main characteristic of the Program BIOTA/FAPESP is the incessant search for new integrating tools. Launching the online only electronic journal Biota Neotropica, with a view of publishing information relevant to the knowledge on biodiversity of the Neotropical region is just another step of this complex process that began in April, 1996.