[Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT matter

[Richard Smith]

The recently published business plan for the proposed Global Taxonomy
Partnership Fund - available from www.bionet-intl.org/gtpf  - identifies
some reasons why taxonomy too often "does not matter" to funders. See
the following extract from page 10: 


"Taxonomy suffers severely from funding gaps. A recent analysis of
existing resources and good practices in taxonomy finds that while
numerous funding bodies exist that provide money for taxonomy related
activities and programmes are in place, the allocation of funding is
fragmented, and lacking particularly for permanent positions in taxonomy
and collection management. Hence, paid taxonomic positions are still in
decline, students favour fields offering more grants and jobs, resulting
in a rapidly aging and under-recruited workforce, and the financial
future of many natural history collections is unsure. Taxonomy seems
like the "poor cousin" in science, unpopular and facing several
challenges in securing financial support for its field: 
i)	while being used as a tool by many sectors, it is generally
taken for granted rather than strongly supported by these; 
ii)	it has to be practiced internationally - species distributions
and relationships do not fol-low political boundaries - but funding for
international studies is difficult to secure; 
iii)	it is cumulative, not prone to sudden breakthroughs, and
seldomly receives crisis or "press release driven" new funding.
iv)	large funding bodies such as the Global Environment Facility
(GEF), the financial body of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) often only implicitly address the taxonomic impediment through
financing of cross-cutting issues such as the ecosystem approach or
protected areas."


Dr Richard Smith
Director
BioNET Secretariat
CABI
Bakeham Lane 
Egham 
Surrey 
TW20 9TY 
United Kingdom 
t +44 1491 829036
f +44 1491 829082
e rsmith at bionet-intl.org
w www.bionet-intl.org

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