Thursday, July 9, 2026

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Room BE.0.18

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Details

Open Science is transforming biodiversity research by promoting transparency, accessibility, and collaboration across disciplines and borders. Yet, despite the exponential growth of biodiversity data, the potential of Open Science to enhance evidence-based conservation remains underexploited because of several barriers. This round table will explore how open data, open tools, and collaborative networks can strengthen evidence-based conservation across Europe and beyond. We aim to generate discussions on the multiple perspectives of utilising Open Science, with special emphasis on data for sustainable infrastructure operation and planning. We also aim to explore gaps in collaborative data-sharing practices between researchers and development professionals. We will highlight successful initiatives such as GBIF, which provides open access to biodiversity data worldwide and RISKY (https://www.risky.pt/), which integrates open wildlife mortality data from energy and transport infrastructure worldwide shared by researchers, NGOs, public and private agencies. These examples demonstrate how open data enable cross-scale analyses, inform management and policy decisions, and enhance conservation impact. We encourage other open-science initiatives to join our discussion and describe their projects as part of the roundtable. We will then explore challenges and opportunities related to data sharing, interoperability, and ethical data use through discussions, breakout groups and live polls. Round table facilitators will guide the conversation towards building consensus on issues, opportunities, and the future scope and role of Open Science in effective conservation. We invite participants from academia, NGOs, governmental institutions, and citizen science networks to share their experiences with Open Science. The session will conclude with a synthesis identifying key priorities for linking Open Science practices with conservation policy and management. We expect the discussions will result in a consensus on the need to standardize best practices for open biodiversity data, networking among open science practitioners, and a potential working group on “open data for conservation”.

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Organiser