"The human impact on the planetary ecosystem is now so palpable that geologists have proposed a new chronological era, the anthropocene, and biologists already call this "the sixth great extinction". Campaigners for decades have been trying to slow, halt or reverse the process, but effective conservation starts with precise and reliable knowledge: life's library, sadly, has not yet been indexed. All of which is why a consortium of distinguished scholars, in the Systematics and Biodiversity journal, has outlined an ambitious initiative to classify, name, describe and map the astonishing variety of life on earth, and catalogue 10m species by 2050. Digital technology means that, for the first time, specimens can be examined and knowledge shared at a distance. The authors want to build on the 3bn specimens already in the world's great museums, universities and botanic gardens to establish a global, comprehensive cyber-museum of life; they want to bring in historians and philosophers of science, engineers and climate scientists and enthusiastic amateurs as well as professional zoologists and botanists.
Good intentions are easily declared, especially with a 40-year horizon. The cost of an encyclopaedic Book of Life would not be negligible. The price of not completing the catalogue could be catastrophic; and the dividend from its completion could be limitless. Nature is not a luxury: it is literally all we have."
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Good intentions are easily declared, especially with a 40-year horizon. The cost of an encyclopaedic Book of Life would not be negligible. The price of not completing the catalogue could be catastrophic; and the dividend from its completion could be limitless. Nature is not a luxury: it is literally all we have."
- More Here
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