The World Flora Online, Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, and the Species Plantarum Programme: Flora of the World: Compatible Concepts or Mutually Exclusive Mandates?

Abstract

Abstract The Species Plantarum Programme: Flora of the World (SPPFW) has been in existence for slightly more than two decades and during this time published basic taxonomic information for just over 1000 species, in 11 families. While an admirable initiative, at this pace it will take about 350 years to reach completion. At the 10th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010, the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) was updated for the period up to 2020 (the first phase of the GSPC had been adopted in 2002). The first target of the Strategy aims to produce an online flora for all known plants of the world by 2020, in about three years therefore. Governments that are parties to the CBD are due to report over the next few years on progress with achieving all of the 16 GSPC targets, including this challenging first target. While many individual countries have initiatives to prepare online digital floras of their own ter...