[Taxacom] Cost of databases

[John Grehan]

Would not the true costs of any database also include the cost of the
original taxonomic works ( and associated field work for specimens) without
which no database would be possible?

John Grehan

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Mary Barkworth <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
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