[Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT matter

["Peter A. Schäfer"]

Hi,
that is what I hear often:
1)what are you doing now? All taxonomy has already been done in the 19th 
century!
2)Nowadays, all you have to do, is taking a piece of plant, put it into 
your computer and read the name on the screen (that seems to be the 
public perception of barcoding).

So why fund taxonomy?

Best wishes
Peter

Dr. Peter A. Schäfer
Conservateur des herbiers (MPU)
Institut de Botanique - Université Montpellier 2
163, rue Auguste Broussonet, F - 34090 MONTPELLIER
tél. (33) 4 99 23 21 82,
pschafer at univ-montp2.fr
Peter.Schafer at univ-montp2.fr
p.a.schafer127 at gmail.com




On 20/04/2011 15:57, Richard Smith wrote:
> 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