The establishment of the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI)
| Release date | 23/08/2007 |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Anne Franklin |
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro gave birth the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The three goals of this Convention - conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources - have become prime points on the political agenda of most of the world's governments.
Given the fact that the CBD agreed to adopt an ecosystem approach rather than the tactic to conserve only charismatic species or vegetation types, taxonomic expertise and competence have become needed across all taxonomic levels. However, already at the Second Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD it was realized that taxonomic (inclusive of genetic) information, taxonomic and curatorial expertise and infrastructure are insufficient in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Hence, such lack was anticipated to be one of the key obstacles (political impotence of biologists and scientific impotence of policy makers being other impediments) in the implementation of the Convention, in particular of Article 7 on identification and monitoring.
In order to overcome this taxonomic impediment, subsequent COP's endorsed consecutive SBSTTA recommendations and established the Global Taxonomy Initiative. During COP-6 an operational programme of work for the GTI has been endorsed (COP decision VI/8, paragraph 5).
This programme of work not only sets operative objectives, but also provides the rationale for the choice of the operational targets. It was concluded that fast and successful implementing of this programme of work will to a large extent depend on: (i) coordinating it with existing national, regional and global initiatives, partnerships and institutions such as, inter alia, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and BioNET-INTERNATIONAL and (ii) taxonomic capacity building at the national and regional levels.
The programme of work of the GTI consists of five operational objectives:
Operational objective 1:
Assess taxonomic needs and capacities at national, regional and global levels for the implementation of the Convention.
Operational objective 2:
Provide focus to help build and maintain the human resources, systems and infrastructure needed to obtain, collate and curate the biological specimens that are the basis for taxonomic knowledge.
Operational objective 3:
Facilitate an improved and effective infrastructure/system for access to taxonomic information; with priority on ensuring that countries of origin gain access to information concerning elements of their biodiversity.
Operational objective 4:
Within the major thematic work programmes of the Convention include key taxonomic objectives to generate information needed for decision-making in conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and its components.
Operational objective 5:
Within the work on cross-cutting issues of the Convention, include key taxonomic objectives to generate information needed for decision-making in conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and its components.
Concisely:
The GTI aims to make taxonomic information, at all levels of biodiversity (genetic, species and ecosystem) and for all organisms, available in order to implement the three goals of the CBD.
