[Nhcoll-l] White House Memo on Scientific Collections

Dirk Neumann dirk.neumann at zsm.mwn.de
Mon Mar 31 10:40:53 EDT 2014


... late Monday afternoon to be correct ;-)

But yes, _1993_ is crucial and an issue,  since most countries 
(including the US) ratified the CBD and (in juridical terms) the Nagoya 
Protocol is - and must be understood as - an addition to the CBD and 
thus will also be binding for non-NP states.

Don't want to go into details of retroactivity and "new utilisation" of 
pre-NP samples, but fact is that there is a big deal of legal 
uncertainty ahead and large job opportunities for unemployed lawyers. If 
any, additional administration / lawyer positions may be created to the 
disadvantage of research / collections staff.


All the best
Dirk


Am 31.03.2014 16:18, schrieb Ellen Paul:
> Oops. CBD went into force in 1993. What can I say? It is Monday morning.
> Ellen Paul
> Executive Director
> The Ornithological Council
> Email:ellen.paul at verizon.net
> "Providing Scientific Information about Birds"
> http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET"
> On 3/31/14, 10:16 AM, Ellen Paul wrote:
>>
>> Dirk -
>>
>> I agree with you entirely. The effect of Nagoya will be contrary to 
>> the original purpose of the CBD. Lofty goals (in my opinion) get 
>> mangled in implementation, much as has been the case with CITES and, 
>> in the U.S., ESA foreign listings.
>>
>> There is a time lag at work here. CBD occurred in 2000. Prior to 
>> 2008, money was flowing freely. Easy credit, lots of cash in the 
>> system...for context, remember that in 2002, the five-year plan to 
>> double the budget of the National Institutes of Health had just been 
>> completed and there was a plan to double the budget of the National 
>> Science Foundation over the next five years.
>>
>> Governments are no longer willing or able to provide sufficient 
>> funding, not that funding was ever ample. But did anyone predict that 
>> things would become this dire?
>>
>> So here we are in a situation where natural history collections are 
>> starving for basic operating funds. Smaller collections are closing 
>> and even some of the most important collections are lacking curators 
>> or collections managers or adequate number of staff.
>>
>> Where do you get funding if not from government sources? Well, of 
>> course some have endowments and if you are lucky enough to be in the 
>> U.S., where the stock market has rebounded, the endowments are 
>> generating a decent amount of funding. At the moment.
>>
>> So that leaves private sector. Which can loosely be divided into two 
>> categories - rich people (and corporations,which in the U.S., are 
>> people) who can be persuaded to make donations and private industry 
>> who are interested in the properties and genetic basis of those 
>> properties of the materials in the collections. If you have to make a 
>> deal with "the devil" as corporations are painted - just to keep the 
>> doors open and the lights on and the collection functioning and 
>> accessible - then isn't that the lesser of the two evils?
>>
>> We've been here before:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/science/biologists-sought-a-treaty-now-they-fault-it.html
>>
>> And I won't go into details, but ornithologists in the U.S. (and 
>> Canada, Mexico, and Japan) can attest to the way that the noble goal 
>> to protect birds has led to a system that - for scientific research - 
>> is often implemented in a manner that actually does nothing at all to 
>> protect wild birds.
>>
>> Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
>>
>> I personally found this section of the White House memo to be most 
>> amusing:
>>
>> /Clearly describe how the agency will apply its scientific 
>> collections policy as a term and //
>> //condition, as appropriate, of providing funding for the acquisition 
>> and stewardship of //
>> //scientific collections that are being managed by a third party or 
>> that the agency does not //
>> //own, but supports or for which it has oversight responsibilities. /
>>
>> Yes, there are occasional little dribbles of funding from one agency 
>> or another for specific projects, but even in the best of times, did 
>> any federal agency support basic stewardship costs for the 
>> collections managed by third parties (the museum community)?
>>
>>
>> Ellen
>> Ellen Paul
>> Executive Director
>> The Ornithological Council
>> Email:ellen.paul at verizon.net
>> "Providing Scientific Information about Birds"
>> http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET"
>> On 3/31/14, 5:59 AM, Dirk Neumann wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> maybe I read this wrong, but in the light of the forthcoming 
>>> ratification of the Nagoya Protocol and Access benefit sharing 
>>> (which the US is not going to ratify), /"making collections more 
>>> accessible to [...] researchers, including non-Federal scientists, 
>>> to maximize public benefit"/, establishment of a clearing house and 
>>> cooperation with the Smithsonian (that established already voluntary 
>>> ABS-guidelines) directs between the lines towards "making 
>>> collections available for applied research and product development".
>>>
>>> While national governments of some industrialised countries aim to 
>>> push collections towards commercialisation, Natural History 
>>> Collections have been identified as potential loophole in the ABS 
>>> system and some NGOs accused collections for biopiracy if 
>>> cooperating too close with industry. Non-commercial benefits and 
>>> capacity building are widely ignored among policy makers, and 
>>> shortcoming for global biodiversity research may be assumed (see 
>>> Buck and Hamilton 2011). Vogel (2013) summarises some of the issues 
>>> that may be anticipated for collections rather cynical but clear.
>>>
>>> With ratification of the Nagoya Protocol later this year (the EU & 
>>> Member States will ratify in few weeks completing the quorum that 
>>> enforces the NP), access, accession, transfer and sharing of samples 
>>> will become more difficult, and I doubt that this agrees with the 
>>> original intention of the CBD to conserve global biodiversity and to 
>>> promote biodiversity research ...
>>>
>>> Dirk
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 26.03.2014 21:43, schrieb Bentley, Andrew Charles:
>>>>
>>>> Hi all
>>>>
>>>> The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy recently 
>>>> issued a new government-wide policy on the management of scientific 
>>>> collections 
>>>> <http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_memo_scientific_collections_march_2014.pdf>, 
>>>> accompanied by a White House blog <http://wh.gov/lVJf8> and a White 
>>>> House Tweet 
>>>> <https://twitter.com/whitehouseostp/status/446654289864187905>.
>>>>
>>>> Some very interesting reading...
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>>     A  :             A  : A  :
>>>>  }<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<)))_°>
>>>>     V                V                V
>>>> Andy Bentley
>>>> Ichthyology Collection Manager
>>>> University of Kansas
>>>> Biodiversity Institute
>>>>
>>>> Dyche Hall
>>>> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
>>>> Lawrence, KS, 66045-7561
>>>> USA
>>>>
>>>> Tel: (785) 864-3863
>>>> Fax: (785) 864-5335
>>>> Email: abentley at ku.edu <mailto:abentley at ku.edu>
>>>>
>>>> http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu 
>>>> <http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu/>
>>>>
>>>> SPNHC President-Elect
>>>>
>>>> http://www.spnhc.org <http://www.spnhc.org/>
>>>>
>>>> :                 :
>>>>     A  :             A  :             A  :
>>>>  }<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<)))_°>
>>>>     V                V                V
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
>>>> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
>>>> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
>>>> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
>>>> society. Seehttp://www.spnhc.org  for membership information.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Dirk Neumann
>>>
>>> Tel: 089 / 8107-111
>>> Fax: 089 / 8107-300
>>> email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de
>>>
>>> Postanschrift:
>>>
>>> Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
>>> Zoologische Staatssammlung München
>>> Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Labor
>>> Münchhausenstr. 21
>>> 81247 München
>>>
>>> Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
>>> http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/
>>>
>>> ---------
>>>
>>> Dirk Neumann
>>>
>>> Tel: +49-89-8107-111
>>> Fax: +49-89-8107-300
>>> email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de
>>>
>>> postal address:
>>>
>>> Bavarian Natural History Collections
>>> The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
>>> Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Lab
>>> Muenchhausenstr. 21
>>> 81247 Munich (Germany)
>>>
>>> Visit our section at:
>>> http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Nhcoll-l mailing list
>>> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
>>> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
>>> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
>>> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
>>> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
>>> society. Seehttp://www.spnhc.org  for membership information.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nhcoll-l mailing list
>> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
>> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
>> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
>> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
>> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
>> society. Seehttp://www.spnhc.org  for membership information.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing list
> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
> society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.


-- 
Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

Postanschrift:

Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Labor
Münchhausenstr. 21
81247 München

Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/

---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

postal address:

Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Lab
Muenchhausenstr. 21
81247 Munich (Germany)

Visit our section at:
http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/

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