Our current inquiry
1.8. The Government's new focus on environmental
sustainability and increasing awareness of the impact of climate
change on biodiversity have made it timely for the Committee to
return again to the issue of systematic biology; and, in particular,
to consider:
(a) whether systematic biology in the UK is in
a fit state to generate the essential taxonomic information required
by the emergence of the concept of ecosystem services (see Box
2 below), and
(b) whether the UK has the skills available to
be able to understand and predict the impact of climate change
on biodiversity,
whilst continuing to meet the ongoing needs of biodiversity
conservation and also the broader needs of taxonomy as a discipline
which underpins all aspects of biology. In considering these questions,
we have borne in mind the historical importance of the UK within
the global taxonomic community as a result of the collections
held in the UK (for example, The Natural History Museum (NHM),
RBG Kew, RGB Edinburgh and the Zoological Society of London).
BOX 2
The ecosystem services concept
Ecosystem Services
are the benefits we derive from natural ecosystems. These benefits
may be derived from supporting services such as primary production
by green plants (upon which virtually all life depends), from
regulating services such as atmospheric gas regulation or pollination,
from provisioning services such as access to wood for fuel, fibres
and food products, and from cultural services such as the recreational
and spiritual value of natural ecosystems. This powerful concept
has sharpened awareness of the direct relationship between the
provision of ecosystem services and continued human well-being
(ref. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment),[4]
and was assimilated into the rationale behind sustainability with
astonishing rapidity.
1.9. This is not just a UK issue. Broad concern
over the state of taxonomy internationally led the parties to
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to acknowledge the
existence of a "taxonomic impediment" to implementation
of the CBD, referring to the shortage of taxonomic expertise,
taxonomic collections, field guides and other identification aids,
as well as to the difficulty in accessing existing taxonomic information.
In response to this "taxonomic impediment", in 2002
the parties to the CBD launched a programme of work under the
Global Taxonomy Initiative.[5]
1.10. Like every scientific discipline, systematic
biology is changing rapidly. New analytical and computational
methods are constantly under development and there was a sense
in our 2002 report that some of the novel approaches explored
in a preliminary way during that inquiry might transform (and
strengthen) the discipline. As part of our current inquiry, we
have looked again at some of the technological developments within
systematic biology in order to assess progress after six years
and to consider their potential for the systematic biologist and
for the discipline as a whole.
Acknowledgements
1.11. The membership of the Select Committee
is set out in Appendix 1, and our call for evidence, published
in December 2007, in Appendix 3. Those who submitted written and
oral evidence are listed in Appendix 2. We would like to thank
all of our witnesses, as well as those who submitted articles
and other materials in the course of the inquiry.
1.12. We launched this inquiry with a seminar,
held in the Darwin Centre at The NHM, in February 2008. During
the course of the day we had the pleasure of touring some of The
NHM collections. A note of the seminar is given in Appendix 4.
We are very grateful to The NHM for hosting the event and to the
speakers who participated in it.
1.13. Finally, our Specialist Adviser for this
inquiry was Professor Geoffrey Boxshall FRS, Merit Researcher
at The NHM. We are grateful to him for his expertise and guidance
throughout the inquiry. However, the conclusions we draw and the
recommendations we make are ours alone.
1 See www.maweb.org Back
2
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, First Report,
Session 1991-92, Systematic Biology Research (HL Paper
22). Back
3
The UK Systematics Forum was also established to provide a focus
for systematic biology science, but was wound down in 2001. See
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, 3rd Report. Session 2001-02,
What on Earth? The Threat to the Science Underpinning Conservation
(HL Paper 118), paras 2.7, 2.8, 3.6 and 3.7. Back
4
See footnote 1 above. Back
5
Guide to the Global Taxonomy Initiative, 2008, CBD Technical
Series No 30, 105pp. Published by the Secretariat of the Convention
on Biology Diversity. See http://www.cbd.int/gti/ Back
