Swedish researchers have launched a scathing
attack on the scientific credentials of an
international advisory body on biodiversity,
warning that its effectiveness is being
undermined by the increasing dominance of
politicians and professional negotiators.
Their concerns about the work of the
scientific body that advises the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) are widely shared,
the convention’s own executive secretary, Ahmed Djoghlaf, has told Nature. The
convention has been signed by 168 countries
who pledge to significantly reduce the current
rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Article 25
of the convention states that government
representatives shall be “competent in the
relevant field of expertise”, but according to the
Swedes, this is often not the case.
In a letter published in Conservation Biology,
the ten scientists in the Swedish delegation to
the CBD say that some parties to the convention
are clearly trying to move away from science so
that the convention does not interfere with trade
and economic growth (L. Laikre et al. Conserv.
Biol. 22, 814–815; 2008).
Per Wramner of Södertörn University College
in Flemingsberg, who is one of the letter’s
authors, says that the February CBD meeting in
Rome pushed them to act after it became bogged
down in political wrangling and semantics. “This
last meeting was a disaster from the scientific
perspective,” says Wramner, who chairs the
Swedish government’s CBD advisory group.
“Mexico and the European Union also expressed
concern that there are too many new issues of
procedure and of a policy nature,” says Djoghlaf.Conservation scientist Michael Stocking of
the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, says
that the nomination system is “the core of the
problem, in that these tend to be government
nominees ... not scientists who are up to date
with the literature”. Countries that fund the CBD
will have to insist on change for it to actually
happen, says Stocking, who is vice-chair of the
Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel for the
Global Environment Facility, which administers
the funding for the CBD.
The concerns come amid attempts led by
France to create a new international science
policy group on biodiversity. Modelled on
the same independent framework as the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this
new body could mitigate some of the recently
raised concerns. A ‘concept note’ for the new
group was circulated last month by France. ■
Daniel Cressey
Biodiversity body
‘lacks science’
ENVIRONMENT POLICY
Shake-up for Endangered
Species Act.
www.nature.com/news
and Environment there. Mearns says social
scientists within the institute will continue to
work with physical scientists at NCAR on integrated
research projects. “And that’s the proper
role for an institute in social science at NCAR.”
On the other side, some scientists are questioning
whether the institution has done
enough to maintain, let alone build, its expertise
in the physical sciences, particularly in
climate modelling. These questions have been
driven home by the departure
of key scientists, including
William Collins, who helped
oversee NCAR’s climate modelling
programme. “I can tell you
in the science divisions here,
it’s the worst mood people have
seen in a long time, and one
reflection is people walking
away,” says Caspar Ammann,
a palaeoclimatologist at the
institution.
NCAR’s new director, Eric
Barron, who took over in July,
says the institution is in an
“interesting position”, caught
between a dismal budgetary
outlook and ongoing concerns about where
NCAR should direct its limited resources. “A number of people are saying that our climate
modelling programme has taken too big of a
hit. People are saying very loudly that NCAR
is not setting its priorities the way it should,” he
says. “The simple fact of the matter is that years
of tight budgets are coming home to roost.”
Barron says he supports the social science
mission but was able to preserve several
particles. The lightest supersymmetrical
particles are expected to be both massive and
stable — making them prime candidates for dark
matter. Occasionally, theorists believe, two of
these particles will smash together and annihilate
each other in a burst of energy. The annihilation
will create a stream of more conventional particles
that will eventually decay, leaving energetic
electrons and positrons. In other words, the positrons
detected by PAMELA could be the direct
result of dark-matter annihilations.
The detection is the second dark-matter
claim by Italians in recent months. In April,
scientists at the DAMA/LIBRA (Dark Matter/
Large Sodium Iodide Bulk for Rare Processes)
experiment, located beneath Italy’s Gran Sasso
mountain, claimed to have seen dark-matter
particles (see Nature 452, 918; 2008). The
PAMELA results are unconnected, and their
suggested mass range for dark matter seems to
contradict the DAMA claim.
PAMELA’s findings are far from certain.
Identifying fast-moving positrons is extremely
difficult, says Stefan Schael, a physicist at
RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Their
positive charge and high energies can make
them look like ordinary protons, he says. Ideally,
experiments would have two detectors
capable of telling the difference, but PAMELA
only has one. “They have only one chance for
this identification,” Schael says. “This is the
main challenge for the group.”
Even if the surplus exists, it could be from
nearby astronomical sources. Objects such
as neutron stars, pulsars and X-ray binary
stars are capable of making energetic positrons
that would fool PAMELA. “When the
data are released there will certainly be a large
number of people looking at the question,” says
Hooper.
For now, however, the community is waiting
with bated breath. As McElrath says: “We all
wonder what’s going on up there.” ■
Geoff Brumfiel
positions throughout the institution “that
are of critical importance” by eliminating a
single programme that he says cost upwards of
$730,000 annually.
NCAR’s base budget — almost $88.5 million
in the fiscal year 2008 — comes from the US
National Science Foundation, although the
institution receives significant funding from
other federal agencies as well. In the fiscal year
2007, its overall budget came to $149.3 million.
Although current appropriations
bills in Congress would
increase NCAR’s budget, few
expect this legislation to pass
in an election year. Congress
is likely to wind up passing
a “continuing resolution”
later this autumn that would
effectively freeze current
spending levels until at least
early next year.
Roger Pielke Jr, a climate
policy expert at the Center
for Science and Technology
Policy Research at the University
of Colorado at Boulder,
says it’s not clear why Glantz
was singled out or, more broadly, how NCAR
is addressing its fiscal situation. “There’s really
no transparency in how these decisions are
made,” he says.
Glantz, who has been guaranteed one year’s
salary, says he plans to stay on for a while,
although such courtesies will not be extended
to his staff, including an administrative position
and two researchers. |
