The handling of the proposal to conserve the name Acacia at the 17th International Botanical Congress -: an attempt at minority rule

The handling of controversial Proposal 1584 to conserve the name Acacia with a conserved type for the Australian acacias during the Nomenclature Section meeting at the 17th International Botanical Congress (Vienna) in 2005 is reviewed. Through a simple majority vote, this Section adopted rules requiring a 60% majority of votes to approve any proposal to modify the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and a simple majority to approve all other motions; motions not receiving the required majority were to be rejected. However, for the motion addressing Proposal 1584, 45.1% voted to conserve the type of the name Acacia for Australian acacias, and 54.9% voted to retain the current African type for the name Acacia. Even though this motion failed to get a 60% majority either way as required by the Section's own rules, Section officials have concluded that the name Acacia is to be conserved for Australian acacias. Treating a motion as approved, even though it received only minority support, also violates the fundamental principle of standard parliamentary procedure-the right of the majority to approve proposals. For Acacia to be formally conserved, the Nomenclature Section needed to approve a motion addressing Proposal 1584 with a majority vote, and this never happened in Vienna. Recommendations are made on how this process might be improved.