[Nhcoll-l] White House Memo on Scientific Collections

Schindel, David schindeld at si.edu
Mon Mar 31 11:10:01 EDT 2014


Dear Colleagues,

This discussion has strayed far from the original posting which is fine, but I want to emphasize a few points.  The White House policy memo calls on all US government departments and agencies to have policies in the specified areas related to scientific collections.  It does not dictate what these policies will be, only that they be must established and made available.  Second, 'scientific collections' as treated by the White House policy memo cover a great range of collection types, of which biodiversity collections is only one.  There are other UN Conventions that could impact other types of collections (WHO for biomedical samples, for instance) and none of them are mentioned in the policy memo.  It will be up to each department and agency to develop policies that reflect US treaty obligations.

All this is to say that nothing in the policy memo should be interpreted as a lack of awareness or sensitivity to the likely entry into force of the Nagoya Protocol.

Regards to all,

David

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From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Dirk Neumann
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 10:41 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] White House Memo on Scientific Collections

... 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<mailto:ellen.paul at verizon.net>

"Providing Scientific Information about Birds"<http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET>

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/science/biologists-sought-a-treaty-now-they-fault-it.html&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=94xk%2BkvyzF5zfdS9tDhVEg%3D%3D%0A&m=KpJ5rrb%2F%2Bp3DVLzLGpz6CleAj6c%2Bm58xs6nRv2jgDS8%3D%0A&s=8aa6233a8c78b2010c69e87de8d86f0ef03131924b17f3b80d226ad834c70f36>

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<mailto:ellen.paul at verizon.net>

"Providing Scientific Information about Birds"<http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET>

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_memo_scientific_collections_march_2014.pdf&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=94xk%2BkvyzF5zfdS9tDhVEg%3D%3D%0A&m=KpJ5rrb%2F%2Bp3DVLzLGpz6CleAj6c%2Bm58xs6nRv2jgDS8%3D%0A&s=285bcb1ef47d242cac9c68f11dad24582c3719d7fb75826c799fd15f267e85a5>, accompanied by a White House blog<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://wh.gov/lVJf8&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=94xk%2BkvyzF5zfdS9tDhVEg%3D%3D%0A&m=KpJ5rrb%2F%2Bp3DVLzLGpz6CleAj6c%2Bm58xs6nRv2jgDS8%3D%0A&s=f4057f4e141e5ce02662fd1b45cbf4384890f62479adbdde21dcb2b2f9bf852f>  and a White House Tweet<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://twitter.com/whitehouseostp/status/446654289864187905&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=94xk%2BkvyzF5zfdS9tDhVEg%3D%3D%0A&m=KpJ5rrb%2F%2Bp3DVLzLGpz6CleAj6c%2Bm58xs6nRv2jgDS8%3D%0A&s=f8e70bb66e1ac3a6138c8693f65bbf945ada90c2a075c5ac6e72c21942516f3c>.

Some very interesting reading...

Andy

    A  :             A  :             A  :
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Andy Bentley
Ichthyology Collection Manager
University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
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http://www.spnhc.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.spnhc.org/&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=94xk%2BkvyzF5zfdS9tDhVEg%3D%3D%0A&m=KpJ5rrb%2F%2Bp3DVLzLGpz6CleAj6c%2Bm58xs6nRv2jgDS8%3D%0A&s=811078674b01e53cfc540ec31d48a844cbdcf1da10c04e56838538b99463055e>

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81247 München



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Dirk Neumann



Tel: +49-89-8107-111

Fax: +49-89-8107-300

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