Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species

A “Joint Work Programme to Strengthen Information Services on Invasive Alien Species as a Contribution towards Aichi Biodiversity Target 9” (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/15/INF/14) was developed to improve access to the necessary information during a workshop organized by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2011. The 15th Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice SBSTTA welcomed the Joint Work Programme. Subsequently a workshop held in July 2012 at the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom with key invasive alien species data providers prepared the “Operational Plan for the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASI Partnership)” (UNEP/CBD/COP/11/INF/34).

The Conference of the Parties to the CBD -COP-11 welcomed the development of the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASI Partnership) and requested the Executive Secretary to facilitate its implementation (paragraph 22 of decision XI/28).

The development of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (GRIIS) and a Pathway management Resource was identified as one of three priority activities of the Partnership. The IUCN ISSG was recognised to lead this activity with partners such as CABI.

GRIIS continues to support national governments in the achievement of Biodiversity targets set in the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Target 6 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework states Eliminate, minimize, reduce and or mitigate the impacts of invasive alien species on biodiversity and ecosystem services by identifying and managing pathways of the introduction of alien species, preventing the introduction and establishment of priority invasive alien species, reducing the rates of introduction and establishment of other known or potential invasive alien species by at least 50 per cent, by 2030, eradicating or controlling invasive alien species especially in priority sites, such as islands.

The monitoring framework for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework provides a set of headline, binary, component and complementary indicators for use in national biodiversity strategies and action plans and national reports. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity endorsed the technical updates to the headline and binary indicators at COP 16 (see CBD/COP/DEC/16/31).

The GRIIS checklist datasets are identified as one of the key resources in the development of the headline indicator for Target 6 “Rate of invasive alien species establishment”.

The Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (GRIIS) presents validated and verified national and subnational checklists of introduced (alien) and invasive alien species.

The published methods underpinning GRIIS and each Checklist is described in Pagad S, Genovesi P, Carnevali L, Schigel D, McGeoch MA (2018) Introducing the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species. Scientific Data, 5, 170202. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017202

A Country Compendium of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species was published in 2022. Pagad, S., Bisset, S., Genovesi, P. et al. Country Compendium of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species. Sci Data 9, 391 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01514-z