Extending Darwin Core to Represent Sociobiodiversity and Traditional Knowledge

What this was about

Clara Baringo Fonseca described Brazil's work on a Darwin Core extension for sociobiodiversity data: the relationships between biodiversity and sociocultural diversity, including traditional uses, practices and knowledge of Indigenous peoples, local communities and family farmers. A 2024 project with Colombia and Argentina produced draft terms (such as use-to, use-form, used-by holder) that were tested in three case studies. The case studies exposed missing fields, ambiguous terms and questions about who should be the data publisher. She also covered the new Entre Ciências intercultural project and templates for registering associated traditional knowledge under Brazil's biodiversity law.

Why it matters. It extends Darwin Core towards Indigenous and local knowledge in a way that respects community data ownership and consent, and links to benefit-sharing law, data sovereignty and Darwin Core Data Package work.

In the room

• Sociobiodiversity data is defined (Brazilian National Sociobiodiversity Plan) as data on the interrelationship between biodiversity and sociocultural diversity: resources, traditional practices, uses and knowledge.
• Communities and territories are the main source and are knowledge holders and data owners. Data should be shared only with their consent and under their governance.
• Other sources include scientific articles, collections (often in occurrence remarks), 17th–19th century naturalists' works, market inventories and films. These are produced in different contexts and make it hard to identify the knowledge holder.
• A 2024 project with Brazil, Colombia and Argentina produced draft extension terms, with controlled vocabularies (use-to, used-by type, source type) and free text (used-by holder, use-form, use-to description), kept on GitHub.
• Three case studies: translating a 17th-century book, working directly with a community on the Rio de Janeiro coast, and a living collection of medicinal plants at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.
• Findings: missing used-by holder and used-where data, ambiguous interpretation of use-to, and debate over whether the researcher or the community is the publisher, which matters for GBIF citation tracking.
• The GEF-funded Entre Ciências project (started two months ago, three years) works with eight territories, six in the Amazon and two in the Cerrado, on data sovereignty, governance and locally chosen monitoring.

Notable moments