Last weekend I mentioned a meeting in Montpellier intended to establish IMoSEB, an International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity. When I wrote the conclusions of the meeting weren't available. Now they are. The International Steering Committee
Invites the Executive Director of UNEP, in collaboration with the Government of France and other governments, the CBD (secretariat, SBSTTA and COP Bureaus) and the partners of the IMoSEB consultation process*, to convene an intergovernmental meeting with relevant governmental, and non-governmental organisations, including the relevant MEAs, academic institutions and civil society (including local communities and indigenous people) to consider establishing an efficient international science-policy interface....(source)
Thud.
The Daily Telegraph described the result this way.
The one concrete outcome of a consultation spanning five continents has been to request a further consultation....
The meeting apparently ended in this way because of the insistence of American representatives. In particular, Leonard Hirsch seems to have played an important role:
One of the most vocal opponents of the new panel, Dr Leonard Hirsch of the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution, said the initiative amounted to misplaced “climate envy” amongst some biodiversity scientists. The two issues, he argued, were entirely different and required different responses.“When you put carbon dioxide or methane into the atmosphere in the United States or in Brazil or in India, it is going into the same environment, mixing and having the same impact.
“To have land-use change in one place in the world, the impact on biodiversity is very different than land-use change in other parts of the world,” said Dr Hirsch.
He claimed that rather than setting up a new global body, it was more important to find ways of enabling decision-makers at the national and local levels to make better use of existing science.
I find Hirsch's argument unpersuasive. It's true that extinction of a species in central China isn't likely to have the same direct impact on my day to day life that carbon dioxide emissions from a Chinese power plant will. But it's also true that easily accessible biodiversity information is woefully incomplete. Take, for example, this recent analysis of records in the International Legume Database and Information Service, one of the most complete databases currently available:
There are over 1/2 million records covering 31% of all Legume species, and 84% of these records pass geographic validation. These data are not yet a global biodiversity resource for all species, or all countries. A user will encounter many biases and gaps in these data which should be understood before data are used or analyzed. The data are notably deficient in many of the world's biodiversity hotspots. (source)
I wasn't a party to any of the IMoSEB discussions, but it seems to me that making better use of existing science isn't enough. We need better science, and IMoSEB could help to provide it.
Thanks to Frog Matters for pointing out the article in the Daily Telegraph.
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