From Plant Press, Vol. 3, No. 3, July 2000.
The recent citizen protests and riots in Seattle, Washington, and Paris have in common a severe reaction against economic globalization, whether it is directed at the World Trade Organization or at McDonald’s fast food chain. Like it or not, globalization has affected the economies and ways of life for most societies on the planet. Even the field of botany has been affected by globalization, most clearly manifest in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) signed and ratified by over one hundred countries (excluding the United States). This international convention now in part determines how we collect scientific plant specimens, how we maintain our current collections, and how we will disseminate information about these collections in the future. The concept and call for a Global Taxonomic Initiative (GTI) as part of the implementation of the CBD is another significant step in botanical globalization.
The Department of Botany has initiated and is participating in many international collaborations. The Biodiversity of the Guianas Program under the leadership of Vicki Funk has made outstanding contributions to our understanding of the diversity and distribution of plants and animals in the Guiana Shield region of South America. These biological achievements have been attained at the same time that a solid infrastructure for future conservation efforts was established through the Center for Biodiversity in Georgetown, Guyana. Similarly Larry Dorr, currently via a Mellon Foundation grant, has organized a collaborative project in Venezuela with colleague Basil Stergios on a floristic inventory of the Guaramacal region in the Andes of that country. A third example is the Department’s efforts in Myanmar. Our original work on the flora has now expanded into a partnership with the Burmese Forest Department on the development of the only botanical garden in that country, Pyin-Oo-Lwin, near Mandalay. We hope to be able to find appropriate funds to develop the educational, recreational, conservation and scientific capabilities of Pyin-Oo-Lwin through the establishment of a Myanmar Center for Botanical Research at the garden. Within the Department are numerous additional examples of international cooperation on biodiversity investigations between both individuals and institutions.
Globalization is not only manifested in international cooperation and interactions. Collaborations may take the form of partnerships across town and across the country as well as across the oceans. A good example of the former is the recent Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Department of Botany and the United States Botanic Garden (USBG). These two institutions are separated by less than half a mile on the National Mall but have formed a collaboration that will have national and perhaps even international effects through joint programs in public outreach, research and conservation. Interestingly the USBG and the Natural History Museum had a common origin in the 1840s through the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Wilkes Exploring Expedition. The living plant collections from that expedition were the reason that Congress chartered the USBG in the 1850s, while the dried plant specimens collected in California and the Pacific formed the core of the scientific collections of the newly founded Smithsonian Institution in 1858. Although only a few living specimens remain (e.g., Encephalartos horridus) from the Wilkes collections, the herbarium collections housed in the Department of Botany are still actively studied today. The first immediate “product” of this local Washington globalization effort will be the co-sponsoring by the USBG of the first Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, to be hosted by the Botany Department and held in March of 2001. This symposium will bring together national and international researchers and students to discuss current controversies in plant systematics, including global issues of species inventory and monographs as well as methods for the accurate and practical naming of taxa.
A final example of our national globalization effort is the result of the Smithsonian’s Affiliations Program, an initiative by former SI Secretary Michael Heyman and continued by current Secretary Larry Small, to move the Institution off the Mall and around the nation. The formal affiliation that was established between the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the Miami Museum of Science as primarily a public outreach effort between the two institutions, has now blossomed into a broader network between NMNH and six local research and educational organizations, including Fairchild Tropical Garden, Montgomery Botanical Center, The Kampong of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Florida International University, and the University of Miami. These institutions have banded together to form the “Coalition for Excellence in Tropical Biology” (CETroB) with the purpose of fostering joint research and educational projects on tropical issues. Inter-institution seminars, courses and research projects are being encouraged and supported by CETroB, especially those that link CETroB members with their colleagues in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In this age of expanding environmental issues and responsibilities, national and international cooperation, as illustrated by the examples above, may be the only way to ever successfully address the challenges we face as plant scientists and educators. The CBD and GTI have placed us, the largest natural history organization in the world, squarely in the midst of biological and environmental globalization for the foreseeable future.
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