Biodiversity and Conservation 9: 361–378, 2000. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Biodiversity Clearing-House Mechanism in China: present status and future needs

Abstract. China is one of the ‘megadiversity ’ countries of the world, and is therefore rich in biodiversity information. The decision making on biodiversity conservation and sustainable utilization demands suf-ficient, accurate, data and information which covers living things as well as natural background and human activities. It is estimated that 152 biodiversity databases have been developed in China, mainly distributed in the thematic information categories of forestry, nature reserve, forest ecosystem, animal, plant, crop germplasm resource, traditional Chinese medicine, water resource, geology/geography, and climate/meteorology, etc. The status quo of biodiversity information system was also reviewed and main information networks related to biodiversity were presented. There are problems in the CHM construction in China, such as insufficient funding, unreasonable organizational mechanism, and low-level information sharing. Future needs for the CHM construction were discussed