[Taxacom] Cost of databases

[Mary Barkworth]

http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/paper-reveals-nature-conservation-knowledge-is-a-bargain (refering to a paper pulished in PLOSOne http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160640

The first three paragraphs of the commenting paper:



A new study released today finds that the knowledge databases which underpin nature conservation and environmental decision-making - such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species(tm) - cost US$ 6.5 million annually to manage, plus the dedication of thousands of volunteers.

The authors estimated that US$ 160 million plus 293 volunteer-years have been invested to date in developing these datasets, and the shortfall to complete the datasets is approximately US$ 114 million.

"This may sound expensive, but these costs are extremely low when compared with other societal expenditures, such as the Global Observing System for Climate, which required US$ 5 - 7 billion to maintain in 2010," says Melanie Heath, Director of Science, Policy and Information at BirdLife International. "To put this in perspective, the annual consumer spending on soft drinks is in the order of US$ 380 billion. Investing in these crucial datasets represents a bargain for society - the costs to create and curate them are easily outweighed by the benefits they deliver. [emphasis added]



Now the challenge is to convert such information into support. Note: "The motivation for the study came from the private sector," says Diego Juffe-Bignoli, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and lead author. "Companies which subscribe to the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool - which provides financial support for Protected Planet, another of the datasets we costed in this research - often ask us how much investment would be necessary to maintain these critical data in perpetuity. Now we have an answer."

The