Main activities

Following its adoption at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and in accordance with its Article 18 on Technical and Scientific Cooperation, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established the Clearing-House Mechanism (CHM) to ensure that all governments have access to the information and technologies they need for their work on biodiversity.

This information exchange platform has evolved into a global network of national CHM nodes/websites with the following mission:

“To contribute significantly to the implementation of the CBD, through effective information services and other appropriate means, in order to promote and facilitate scientific and technical cooperation, knowledge sharing, and information exchange, and to establish a fully operational network of Parties and partners”.

The CHM network proved to be particularly important in making progress toward the achievement of Aichi Target 19 of the ‘Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020’, the overarching implementation framework of the CBD until 2020. Within the current ‘Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’, the CHM is key to advancing toward Target xx.

In this context, the Belgian National Focal Point (NFP) to the CHM – through its partnering role for the CHM in the framework of the CEBioS program – helps countries to improve their access to information and furnishes means to relay these efficiently at national level, among others through the Internet. The Belgian CHM NFP also contributes to the exchange of scientific and technical expertise.

Since 1999, the Belgian CHM partnership has helped several developing countries establish and maintain their national CHM websites. These websites used to run under a Content Management System (CMS) called the ‘European Community CHM Portal Toolkit’ (PTK); from 2006 to 2018, partner CHMs were trained in the use of this PTK. Moreover, the PTK-based websites of 28 countries were hosted on the Belgian CHM server for several years (‘CHM network of Belgian partner countries’). 

Since 2017, in collaboration with Belgium and the CHM-Informal Advisory Committee (IAC), the CBD Secretariat has been developing a new CMS called ‘Bioland’. The objective is to have all national CHM websites running under Bioland and hosted on the CBD server to facilitate interoperability and collaboration between all CBD parties. Therefore, as of 2019, the Belgian CHM NFP offers training courses to countries participating in the Belgian CHM partner network to make the transition from PTK-based sites hosted on the Belgian CHM server to websites running under the new Bioland tool on the CBD server.

Some examples of CHM websites of our partner countries: