Memorandum submitted by BioNET-INTERNATIONAL
BioNET-INTERNATIONAL (BioNET[1])
is a UK-based, international not-for-profit organisation recognised
under the United Nations[2]
as "the most comprehensive network" for taxonomy and
by a Darwin Initiative review[3]
as probably the most important network in the field world-wide.
Coordinated by a secretariat hosted in the UK by CABI since 1993,
BioNET is mandated to provide advice on taxonomy to the Secretariat
of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a member of
the Coordination Mechanism of the Global Taxonomy Initiative.
This evidence draws on BioNET's experience of working with CABI
and other UK taxonomic institutions internationally and with taxonomists,
end-users and relevant policy and regulatory forums world-wide,
particularly in the developing world.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS:
UK taxonomic facilities and expertise are enormously
valuable and very often unique resources at the global, not only
UK level. Indeed, UK biological collections and associated information
and human resources are overwhelmingly concerned with forms of
life that occur outside the UK. We recognise that the rich legacy
of investment in taxonomic resources has allowed UK institutions
and experts to take leading roles in founding pioneering international
initiatives in taxonomy, for example the Global Taxonomy Initiative,
Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the Catalogue of Life
and BioNET. Considering the global reach and relevance of UK taxonomic
facilities and organisations, we urge this inquiry to give appropriate
consideration to the status of the international dimensions of
UK taxonomic work and capacity building.
The UK, as party to multilateral agreements
concerned with the environment, trade and development, has accepted
significant obligations to contribute to taxonomic capacity building
in the developing world, either specifically (as under the CBD
or World Summit on Sustainable Development) or as an integral
part of its wider commitments to scientific and technical capacity
building. A number of excellent taxonomic capacity development
projects drawing on UK expertise have been supported by the Darwin
Initiative, many of which demonstrate the real benefits taxonomy
brings to CBD implementation and sustainable development. However,
these generally remain isolated examples of good practice and,
being focused on CBD implementation, do not address the building
of capacity and sharing of best practice needed to generate taxonomic
products and expertise that support agriculture, trade standards,
biosecurity, health, etc. The larger investment needed to transform
developing country access to and participation in taxonomy requires
development assistance funding which in turn requires an appropriate
distribution of funding responsibilities between Defra (which
leads on most multilateral environmental agreements) and DFID
(which leads on capacity development according to developing country
and multilateral priorities). Currently it appears there is little
connection between the multilateral commitments to capacity development
entered into by the former, and the capacity development programmes
of the latter. As a consequence, capacity building in taxonomy,
which is highly dependent on international collaboration for training,
access to collections, technology dissemination, mentoring and
developing information products is one area where the potential
for UK impact on development goals is far from being realised.
THE STATE
OF SYSTEMATICS
AND TAXONOMY
RESEARCH
1. What is the state of systematics research
and taxonomy in the UK? What are the current research priorities?
What are the barriers, if any, to delivering these priorities?
Investment in taxonomy increasingly needs, as
in all sciences, to be prioritised to respond to the demands of
society and new scientific questions. It is important, therefore,
to ask what the research priorities should be so that resources
can be directed at these. However, priorities for study will depend
on the stakeholder being consulted. Taxonomists can inform on
and might prioritise major gaps in knowledge of taxa occurring
in the UK or elsewhere. Equally, stakeholders from, eg, other
fields of biology and ecology, or who are non-scientific end-users
of species names and identification aids, can best inform about
priorities from their perspectives. Regulatory authorities using
names in areas open to legal dispute may, for instance, be most
in need of internationally accepted lists of controlled species
with names—including common names and synonyms—that
have been agreed by a consensus of taxonomists and are regularly
updated by an online system. In asking what the research priorities
are or should be, all types of stakeholders need to be consulted.
2. What is the role of systematics and taxonomy
and, in particular, in what way do they contribute to research
areas such as biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and
climate change? How important is this contribution and how is
it recognised in the funding process? How is systematics integrated
in other areas of research?
In biodiversity conservation, taxonomy is one
key source, for instance, of baseline data on species occurrences
needed by environmental managers to reduce the rate of biodiversity
loss and meet the 2010 Biodiversity Target (adopted by the CBD
and incorporated in the Millennium Development Goals of the UN).
Invasive species are one of the two most persistent threats to
ecosystem services; management of invasive calls on taxonomic
support for detection, monitoring, control and eradication. Data
held in biological collections allows prediction of climate change
impacts, risk assessments and rational planning of protected areas.
More broadly, the benefits of taxonomy to society are diverse
and increasingly well documented[4].
Indeed, taxonomic research (and the products and data this generates)
is highly relevant to human well-being (eg agriculture, health,
biosecurity, biotechnology), not only management of the natural
environment. That taxonomy is integral to development has been
recognised at the highest international level in the Plan of Implementation
of the World Summit on Sustainable Development[5].
A number of countries—Brazil, China, Mexico for example—that
are rich in biodiversity are investing significantly in taxonomy,
demonstrating that, like Europe and other parts of the "developed
world", they see a taxonomic infrastructure as integral to
their well-being. But in much of the world taxonomy is poorly
supported and very often poorly integrated with other sciences
and applications and development processes. Communicating the
relevance of taxonomy to the challenges of today continues to
be vital for building the political and popular support needed
to build capacity where there is none and revive and sustain the
science where it is out of fashion.
3. Does the way in which systematics research
is organised and co-ordinated best meet the needs of the user
community? What progress has been made in setting up a body to
lead on this? What contribution do the leading systematics research
institutions make both nationally and internationally?
Taxonomists are not the only users of taxonomy,
yet typically assessments of "taxonomic needs" seek
to understand priorities only from the research or practitioner
perspectives. In contrast, the innovative user-driven UK GTI Needs
Assessment[6]—delivered
with Defra, NHM and UK-GTI steering group support—is a strong
basis for understanding what taxonomic products and research are
needed by users in one sector—biodiversity conservation—in
the UK. The challenge now is twofold: (a) to use the insights
and lessons from the Assessment to promote the development of
necessary information, research and capacity to meet the identified
end-user needs; and (b) undertake assessments following similar
methodology in other fields which benefit greatly from taxonomic
support such as agriculture (including trade related issues) and
health. Evidence to date suggests that use of the UK Needs Assessment
to prioritise research and other taxonomic effort has been slow.
There appears to be a lack of even the minimal resources needed
for ongoing coordination and facilitation of taxonomist / end-user
relationships.
Internationally, Defra has supported NHM and
BioNET in applying similar user-oriented methodology to needs
assessments for invasive species management globally, and for
biodiversity conservation and use in Ghana[7].
At the European level, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy
(6th framework European network of excellence) has a strong focus
on engaging users and understanding their needs for taxonomy.
The challenge for such assessments is to incorporate their findings
into the appropriate policy forums and inform taxonomists, non-taxonomist
users and funding bodies in such a way that they can take action
to meet needs identified.
4. What level of funding would be needed to
meet the need for taxonomic information now and in the future?
Who should be providing this funding?
In addition to national funding sources, an
international mechanism is needed to finance taxonomy where it
can bring most benefits—the developing world—and to
enable realisation of the innovative, web-based approaches that
are transforming the pace at which the science can be practiced
and delivered to benefit users in science and society. With heightened
concern about the biodiversity crisis, popular excitement at species
discovery (new marine life forms, new primates in Southeast Asia,
etc.) and growing Corporate Social Responsibility programmes,
there is scope to explore the establishment of public-private
partnerships for taxonomy. The goal should be new, sustained multi-million
sources of funding that complement existing national funding programmes.
5. How does funding in other countries compare?
Could there be more international collaboration? If so, what form
should this collaboration take and how might it be achieved?
International taxonomic partnerships such as
EDIT and BioNET, together with informatics initiatives (GBIF,
Catalogue of Life etc) provide unprecedented opportunities to
accelerate the delivery of high value taxonomic information, products,
research and services in support of sustainable development, climate
change adaptation and biodiversity conservation and benefit sharing.
The UK, through our major national institutions and international
organisations such as CABI and Species 2000, is playing a leading
role. Yet international collaborative programmes each struggle
for funding from year to year. BioNET has attracted modest, restricted
funding for projects from DFID and DEFRA, but to date the UK has
not joined a consortium of other countries, led by Switzerland,
in supporting core activities, making its continued location in
the UK uncertain.
In an era of ever more fragmented taxonomic
capacity world-wide, unprecedented information and communication
technologies and growing international commitments to environmental
stewardship and development, current taxonomic facilities can
best serve all their users through international integration and
partnerships. Those countries strong in capacity—the former
Soviet Union countries and Cuba, for instance—can benefit
from marketing their services and expertise through research cooperation,
information sharing and training partnerships, thereby providing
a solution to some of the more urgent taxonomic needs around the
world. The UK is a leader in making taxonomic partnerships work—including
examples supported by the Darwin Initiative. Could this UK expertise
not be used to mobilise existing capacity in this way?
6. What impact have developments in DNA sequencing,
genomics and other new technologies had on systematics research?
In what way has systematics embraced new technologies and how
can these research areas interact successfully and efficiently?
Use of DNA sequencing, notably in "DNA
barcoding", is attracting growing and already highly significant
research interest. Contrary to the view of some non-taxonomists,
the use of DNA sequences as characters does not threaten to make
taxonomists redundant. Rather, it is empowering them to focus
more time on the interesting research questions, while delivering
identification support and biodiversity assessments to more users
more quickly in many more places. The benefits of However, if
significant amounts of information be accessible only with DNA
data, or tools be made available to speed up identification using
sequence data, there will be a need for UK to work with developing
countries to enable their participation and assistance in generating
data. There will also be a need to ensure that national legislation
under the CBD Access and Benefit-sharing regime does not impede
taxonomic research across national boundaries.
DATA COLLECTION,
MANAGEMENT, MAINTENANCE
AND DISSEMINATION
7. Does the way in which taxonomic data is
collected, managed and maintained best meet the needs of the user
community? What is the state of local and national recording schemes?
Digitisation of UK-held specimen data, specimen
images and information as well as literature is providing ready
access to these resources to taxonomists anywhere in the world.
This is needed to enable rapid response, with appropriately presented
information, to applied and research questions alike. There is
then a need to ensure:
— the technology is deployed to facilitate
easy access to digitised information and data in a coherent fashion,
— that "users" in developing
countries as well as "providers" in the UK and other
industrialised nation can provide information,
— that appropriate quality control
and fitness-for-use measures are introduced,
— that funds and priorities are developed
to significantly accelerate population of the systems with data
and information,
— that appropriate changes in the sociology
of research institutes are developed, to enable use of time in
this area.
8. What is the role of the major regional
museums and collections? How are taxonomic collections curated
and funded?
9. What progress has been made in developing
a web-based taxonomy? How do such initiatives fit in with meeting
demand for systematics and taxonomy information? How do UK-led
initiatives fit in with international initiatives and is there
sufficient collaboration?
This overlaps a little with the response to
question 7. Progress in this area must not be limited to pilot
projects only, but enabled to extend to be the default mechanism
for publishing taxonomic information. This will require action
within the taxonomic community at the level of the Codes of Nomenclature,
as well, as work with publishers to allow open access to published
studies, and the development of a means of sustainable long-term
access to such digitised resources. The technical issues transcend
taxonomy, but cannot be resolved without the involvement of taxonomists.
It will also require funding to increase content.
10. What needs to be done to ensure that web-based
taxonomy information is of high quality, reliable and user-friendly?
11. How does the taxonomic community engage
with the non-taxonomic community? What role do field studies play?
Engagement of the taxonomic community with the
non-taxonomic community continues to be highly inadequate. Too
often, taxonomists work in a high degree of isolation from other
biological disciplines and the wider biodiversity and policy communities.
Taxonomic institutions and initiatives such as NHM, RGB Kew, BioNET,
EDIT and GBIF recognise and can point to examples of pioneering
work that address aspects of this disconnect, for instance case
studies, user-taxonomist forums, strategies and policy development.
These need supporting and expanding and coordination at the UK
level.
SKILLS BASE
12. What are the numbers and ages of trained
taxonomists working in UK universities and other organisations?
13. What is the state of training and education
in systematics and taxonomy? Are there any gaps in capacity? Is
the number of taxonomists in post, and those that are being trained,
sufficient to meet current and future needs across all taxonomic
subject areas?
Training and education, especially in lesser
studied groups such as fungi and nematodes, is in critical decline,
a state mirrored by the elimination of employment opportunities
in the UK.
1 BioNET's Mission is to Enhance human well-being
and biodiversity conservation by building capacity to discover,
name, and classify the world's living organisms. Back
2
CBD decision VI/8. Back
3
Wortley, A H and Wilkie, P (2005), Annex 4, Thematic Review
of Darwin Initiative's contribution to the GTI, DEFRA and
ECTF. Accessible from http://linkger.com/2ede3a (accessed 30 January
2008) and forthcoming on http://darwin.defra.gov.uk/reports/thematic_review.GTI.pdf. Back
4
www.bionet-intl.org/why Back
5
WSSD Plan of Implementation, paragraph 44s Back
6
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/biodiversity-museum/global-taxonomic-initiative/uk-taxonomic-needs-assessment/index.html Back
7
http://www.bionet-intl.org/opencms/opencms/tnaPages/default.html Back
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