On February 7 and 8, a meeting was held among representatives of the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Ecology and Environmental Protection, headed by Chairman B. Kuchkarov, with representatives of the Institute of Botany and Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Within the framework of this meeting, our joint project with GEF on "Sustainable natural resource use and forest management in key mountainous areas important for globally significant biodiversity" presented the latest innovative Biodiversity Conservation Information Management System (BCIMS) and a publicly accessible Internet portal - Information Center on Biodiversity of Uzbekistan (ICBU). The website contains information on national and international legislation on nature management, flora and fauna, on protected natural areas, programs and strategies, etc. These systems were developed by our joint project with GEF and State Ecology Committee "Sustainable natural resource use and forest management in key mountainous areas important for globally significant biodiversity".

BCIMS is an online resource of the Geo-data base, which allows to include, store and update data on flora and fauna, including nationally and globally threatened, as well as economically important species of animals and plants and existing threats to biodiversity conservation for the joint use of State Ecology Committee and other partner national agencies collecting and reporting biodiversity data.

In addition, this information system contains data on scientific collections of animals and plants and types of land use in accordance with national legislation and regulations.

In the meantime, a server has been installed and a demo version of the BCIMS has been launched, which will be updated with data in the future and will provide significant support to the State Ecology Committee and all relevant organizations in planning and managing the country's natural resources.

State Ecology Committee experts also presented an online version of the new edition of the national Red Book and discussed issues of joint cooperation to finalize the online version of the Red Book and supplementing the data of the presented system on managing natural resources. During the discussions, it was also proposed to integrate the ICBU web platform into the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).