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Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation - Global Checklists

Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is, “A widely accessible working list of known plant species, as a step towards a complete world flora”. The Target underpins the Strategy as without this list even measuring progress towards the other 15 targets of the GSPC with any degree of reliability is impossible. RBG Kew played a major role in the development of the GSPC and Target 1 in particular, providing the background documentation and rationale for this Target to the Conference of Parties to the CBD which approved the Strategy and its Targets in April 2002. RBG Kew was then invited to facilitate the Stakeholder consultation on Target 1 by the Secretariat of the CBD. This process in turn led to an international workshop, hosted by RBG Kew and Species 2000 which identified the major barriers to completion of the Target, suggested solutions to these barriers and produced analysis identifying the status of checklist production for plant families and major gaps (www.plants2010.org/targets/target1.html). The results of this exercise were used by GBIF to prioritise funding for seed money grants, and as a result, checklists are now being produced for the two major gaps in coverage: the Compositae and Melastomataceae.

In addition to the strategic and planning role within the CBD and GBIF, RBG Kew has been the major contributor of checklist data to the Target.  We have produced online checklists of families covered by our systematic teams, notably, Monocots, Rubiaceae, Lamiaceae, Myrtaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and in collaboration with ILDIS, Leguminosae. (See Science Audit documentation for these teams). By the end of January 2006, RBG Kew will have contributed around one third of Target 1 (106 plant families). Simultaneously, Kew plays a major role in the collaborative online International Plant Names Index (IPNI) which provides baseline nomenclatural data necessary for all checklists. IPNI is a collaborative venture between RBG Kew, Harvard University, and the Centre for Plant Diversity Research, Canberra. RBG Kew has also been working with New York Botanical Garden and Missouri Botanical Garden to develop mechanisms for accelerating collaborative checklist building (www.iplants.org) and is currently investigating possibilities of linking IPNI and Tropicos to improve the standardisation of name data.

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