3GTW
the 3rd Global Taxonomy Workshop
Pretoria 2002
Paris 2003

Theme: Towards Sustainable Development: Partnerships for Building Demand-driven Taxonomic Capacity
[View the full programme WORD 880KB]

This, the Third BioNET INTERNATIONAL Global Taxonomy Workshop (3GTW), followed on from the Founding Consultation in 1993 in London and the First and Second Global Workshops held in Cardiff in 1995 and 1999 respectively. The First Global Workshop in 1995 established the modus operandi for the Global Network and was instrumental in obtaining the necessary funds from donors to initiate activities. The second, in 1999, reviewed progress and, in recognising that the external environment had changed dramatically since BioNET-INTERNATIONAL’s inception and that it was imperative to work with the plethora of rapidly-developing related global activities (whilst continuing to build the sub-regional Technical Cooperation Networks), set the agenda for placing the Global Network firmly in the international Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) arena.

This third Workshop was planned to fall in the middle of two momentous occasions for taxonomy; between the approval of the Global Taxonomy Initiative’s Programme of Work at CoP6 of the CBD in April 2002, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The need for 3GTW - a global taxonomic needs assessment - was explicitly recognised as Activity 3 of the the GTI Programme of Work, one of a number of GTI Activities that BioNET is contributing to.

The objectives of 3GTW, within the theme of Partnerships for Demand-Driven Taxonomic Capacity Building, were five-fold:
· To identify the end-user needs of taxonomy and the capacity required to meet these needs;
· To identify the role of technical cooperation, new tools and new technologies for enhancing capacity building;
· To define the roles of all stakeholders in the capacity building process;
· To identify roles and opportunities in resourcing the identified capacity building; and, most importantly;
· To come away with an agreed global partnership for moving activities forward to overcome the Taxonomic Impediment.

In order to facilitate this, 3GTW was structured to provide keynote addresses on the above topics in the morning Plenary sessions, and then to move to Workshop breakout sessions in the afternoons to ensure participation and input by all. On Thursday and Friday, these debates were taken up in regional forums, looking at unique regional opportunities and constraints. A drafting group pulled all the deliberations together with a final presentation during the closure on Friday afternoon of both a global strategy with underlying action plans, and a statement on overcoming the Taxonomic Impediment for the WSSD (available in English, French and Spanish).

This was an ambitious agenda but we were not starting from scratch. It was important to recognise and build on past achievements and remain focused on the workshop objectives. To ensure, therefore, that our efforts result in successful progress, delegates were urged to review the Darwin Declaration and the Guidelines, Roles and Responsibilities for 3GTW participants.

The organisers hope that the end result of 3GTW has been a significant move forward in the taxonomic capacity building agenda in terms of an agreed strategy and detailed action plans for overcoming the Taxonomic Impediment via implementation of the GTI Programme of Work and related initiatives.

3GTW was hosted by SAFRINET, the Southern African Network for Taxonomy in Pretoria. The workshop was organised in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and UNESCO-MAB and in association with the Secretariat of the International Plant Protection Convention. The workshop brought together end users of taxonomic outputs, technology providers, development organisations and taxonomists.