Dear colleagues I wanted to pass on details of a side event we will be co-hosting at the upcoming meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP13) being held in Cancún, Mexico from 5-17 December. The event, entitled 'Mobilizing biodiversity data for decision making in Africa: progress and challenges' will be held at 13.15 on Tuesday, 6th December (see flyer attached) and is hosted jointly by GBIF Secretariat, the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). It will be an opportunity to showcase the BID projects currently under way in Africa as well as highlighting the further opportunity presented by the second BID Africa call scheduled for launch in February 2017. In case you are aware of any representatives from your institutions or partners in your country attending the COP event, I would be very grateful if you could pass on details of this event as they would be most welcome to attend. We will also make the presentations available to these lists after the event. Apologies for any cross posting. Kind regards Tim Tim Hirsch Deputy Director Head of Participation and Engagement Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Secretariat Universitetsparken 15 DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø Denmark +45 2875 1485 (mobile) +45 3532 1476 (office, direct line) www.GBIF.org<www.gbif.org> Skype: lukehirsch