Plant Conservation has 2020 Vision

From Plant Press Vol. 14, no. 3

Editor's Note
By Gary A. Krupnick

In October 2010, in Nagoya, Japan, the 10^th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a Decision incorporating a consolidated update of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) for the period 2011-2020. Over 180 countries backed the Global Strategy when it was first introduced to the CBD in April 2002. They recognized that up to two thirds of the world's plant species could be threatened by the end of this century unless urgent steps are taken to safeguard tens of thousands of species.

The original strategy set 16 targets in plant conservation to be achieved by 2010. These 16 outcome-oriented targets fall into five categories: understanding and documenting plant diversity, conserving plant diversity, using plant diversity sustainably, promoting education and awareness about plant diversity, and building capacity for the conservation of plant diversity. The new GSPC has revised targets set for 2020.

The ultimate and long-term objective of the Strategy is to halt the current and continuing loss of plant diversity. The mission of the Strategy is a catalyst for working together at all levels – local, national, regional and global – to understand, conserve and use sustainably the world's immense wealth of plant diversity while promoting awareness and building the necessary capacities for its implementation.

To help nations meet the targets, a consortium of international and national plant and conservation agencies have formed the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation. The Partnership brings together international, regional and national organizations in order to contribute to the implementation of the GSPC and provide tools and resources on how each country can plan and act to meet the targets. The National Museum of Natural History is a member of the Partnership.

Botanists, plant taxonomists, ecologists, and conservation biologists in the Department of Botany at the Museum are playing a significant role in contributing to achieving the 16 targets, specifically Target 1 (an online flora of all known plants) and Target 2 (an assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species, as far as possible, to guide conservation action). The GSCP provides an international mandate for taxonomists to pursue these assessment activities.

Target 1 is well under way towards completion. The Plant List is a working list of all known plant species. Version 1, released in December 2010, aims to be comprehensive for species of vascular plants and bryophytes. Version 1 contains 1,244,871 million scientific plant names of which 298,900 are accepted species names. Development of The Plant List has been a collaborative venture coordinated at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden and relying on the generosity of many collaborators who manage significant taxonomic data resources. One significant resource is the Global Compositae Checklist, an integrated database of nomenclatural and taxonomic information for the second largest vascular plant family in the world. This checklist is published by the International Compositae Alliance (which includes members Vicki Funk and Harold Robinson) and is compiled from many contributed datasets. More than 100,000 records derived from the Global Compositae Checklist are included in The Plant List.

A leader in plant taxonomy and evolution, NMNH’s Department of Botany and the U.S. National Herbarium (USNH) together have made great strides in contributing and addressing many of the 16 GSPC targets (see The Plant Press 10: 1, 9-15; 2007). These contributions take the form of scientific papers and books, electronic publications, symposiums and informal lectures, new species descriptions, specimen collections, conservation assessments, and making many specimens of the USNH collections accessible over the internet. Much more work needs to be done towards reaching the targets, and the Department of Botany will play an active part in achieving these goals by the year 2020.