The Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity (COP) at their meeting in Jakarta in 1995
echoed the warnings of previous committees organized around the world to outline the problems we face in
the future of taxonomy. The perception by the COP of a lack of taxonomists to handle the enormous task
identifying and naming the biodiversity we have yet to describe on this earth led the IUBS/Diversitas to term
this lack of expertise as the “taxonomic impediment”1
. Elaine Hoagland (1996) highlighted the term in her
white paper on the subject for the COP. Her paper precipitated an overwhelming chorus of “I second that” by
fellow taxonomists as well as in their subsequent discussions that fine-tuned proclamations of the need and
the methods by which we could solve the problem.