2019 Rainmaker Readiness: The benefits of improved governance of taxonomic lists

The project is aiming to assess the costs and benefits of improving the governance of taxonomic lists. Currently there are no rules on how to choose between species lists leading to multiple competing lists, even though such lists are fundamental to several international treaties, national legislation and regulations, macro-ecology and conservation. The project was intended to run in parallel with a complementary three-year project already funded by the International Union of Biological Sciences to development a taxonomic list governance framework. The aim of the current project is to quantify the benefits of compliance with an appropriate governance regime and the costs of the current arrangements. Support is required to bring governance and taxonomic experts to Darwin who will both contribute to the IUBS project and become collaborators in the ARC Discovery Grant application.