[Nhcoll-l] White House Memo on Scientific Collections
Kathryn Davis
kathrynkdavis1 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 31 10:59:22 EDT 2014
Hi Dirk, Ellen, all,
Well, the US didn't ratify the CBD (it only signed - and is now one of only
3 non-Parties, along with the Vatican and Andorra!) but you are so very
right that lawyers everywhere are going to have all sorts of
opportunities... It sounds like, from the last meeting of the
intergovernmental committee for the Nagoya Protocol, many Nagoya Parties
are threatening to deny access to non-Nagoya Parties - I can imagine that
those threats will be completely ignored at the larger
commercial/commodity-level trade of genetic resources but will come to bear
on the non-commercial sector.
Regardless, everyone is going to have to be very clear about the terms and
conditions on the material they hold and exchange, and work out ways to
keep information about the providers and permits and terms linked with
material as it travels about, and make it abundantly clear that they are
sharing all sorts of valuable non-monetary benefits...
All the best,
Kate
Kate Davis
ABS Advisor, Botanic Gardens Conservation International
On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Dirk Neumann <dirk.neumann at zsm.mwn.de>wrote:
> ... 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" <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" <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
>
> http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu
>
>
>
> SPNHC President-Elect
>
> http://www.spnhc.org
>
>
>
> : :
> A : A : A :
> }<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<(((_°>.,.,.,.}<)))_°>
> V V V
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing listNhcoll-l at mailman.yale.eduhttp://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/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing listNhcoll-l at mailman.yale.eduhttp://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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing listNhcoll-l at mailman.yale.eduhttp://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.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing listNhcoll-l at mailman.yale.eduhttp://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/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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.
>
>
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