Species 2000 Web site

This is a link to the Species 2000 database website. The Species 2000 programme has the aim of creating a uniform and validated index to the world's known species for use as a practical tool in inventorying and monitoring biodiversity worldwide. The index will be used to provide: electronic species lists for use in inventorying projects worldwide, the index for an Internet gateway to species databases worldwide, a reference system for comparison between inventories a comprehensive world-wide catalogue for checking the status, classification and naming of species.

The Programme was established by the international scientific unions IUBS, CODATA and IUMS, subsequently endorsed by UNEP in its Biodiversity Work programme, and is associated with the Clearing House Mechanism of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was endorsed by a number of taxonomic database organisations at an Inaugural GEF-funded Workshop at ICLARM in Manila in 1996, and is now being run as a separate legal entity by an international team of scientists.

This Project Management Team meets two or three times a year at various locations around the world, to promote the activities of Species 2000, to manage the project, to meet with sponsors, potential users, and with taxonomic database organisations. Recent meetings have been in the UK, in Taiwan, in St Louis MO and Washington DC, in the Netherlands, in France, and in Manila; future locations include Japan.