COP17: Can countries break deadlock on sharing benefits from nature’s digital data?

When a pharmaceutical company uses genetic information from an Amazonian plant to develop a drug, or when an agribusiness company uses it to create a more drought-resistant crop, they are drawing on genetic information found in nature.

For decades, countries have developed regulations to control access to genetic resources and share benefits deriving from their use. In many cases, companies and researchers need permission to collect biological material, drawing up agreements with governments about sharing such benefits. But these regulations were built around material resources.

Biotechnology has allowed researchers to go further. By sequencing DNA from a biological sample, researchers can put that genetic information into online databases and make it available to other researchers, who can use that information without handling the original specimen.

This information is called Digital Sequence Information (DSI), and its use has led to a simple yet complex question: given that genetic information from nature can be accessed and downloaded from these public databases for use in research and development, how should the countries and communities connected to that biodiversity benefit?

In 2022, countries agreed to establish a new system to share benefits from such information. Two years later, they agreed on how this would work, creating the Cali Fund, which is expected to receive contributions from companies that benefit commercially from DSI.

Now, ahead of the United Nations’ biodiversity summit COP17, taking place in Armenia from 19-30 October, governments are debating how to make that system work in practice. Experts Dialogue Earth spoke to say questions remain over the framing of contributions to the fund, as well as governance issues and the fragmentary nature of regulations over such information.

A new system, but with unresolved questions

When the Cali Fund was created at COP16, leaders and organisations hailed the innovation as a groundbreaking mechanism that would support biodiversity protection and the many communities that safeguard natural resources. The multilateral mechanism would channel part of the commercial value of DSI into protecting nature at a global level.

According to its mandate, commercial users in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, agribusiness and AI are invited to make either a contribution of 1% of annual profits or 0.1% of revenues.

But over a year and a half after its launch, there has been low uptake, with only two companies contributing USD 6,000 in total, according to Mongabay. This sharply contrasts with its potential: analysis by the London School of Economics (LSE) earlier this year estimates that the fund could generate between USD 929 million to USD 3.6 billion annually across nearly 22,000 eligible companies.

“The current capitalisation is obviously disappointing. It is, of course, also not surprising [as] this fund is a new instrument. It takes time for the market actors to become familiar with it, but also to trust that this can work,” said Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), responding to a question from Dialogue Earth at a CBD press conference in September. The CBD is a 1992 international treaty which established the fair sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources, under which the Cali Fund was created.

This low capitalisation partly relates to how the fund functions. Contributions to the Cali Fund are on a voluntary basis. Also, under a 2014 international agreement known as the Nagoya Protocol, 65 countries reported already having their own national laws on access and benefit-sharing, according to a July 2026 analysis by the law firm Covington & Burling. These enforce legal requirements for companies to obtain permits and share benefits when using local genetic resources.

As a result, companies fear that paying into the global fund won’t protect them from national enforcement, according to trade organisations like the International Chamber of Commerce. “Contributions are limited because companies wish to resolve critical questions first,” Bart Van Vooren, a partner specialising in biodiversity law at Covington & Burling who co-authored the analysis, told Dialogue Earth. “A payment into the Cali Fund, at this time, does not mean that a company has complied with [a country’s] legislation.”

But experts like Siva Thambisetty, an associate professor of law at LSE, don’t believe legal uncertainty is the biggest challenge. “I don’t support people who claim that ‘legal certainty’ is the top reason behind the unavailability of funds,” she told Dialogue Earth. The only way to achieve real legal certainty is via a legally binding agreement, which companies tend to avoid, she added.

A lepanthes limbata orchid native to Colombia. DSI database limitations have led some experts to raise concerns about whether countries are getting their fair share of benefits from companies’ use of genetic information extracted from local resources (Image: Sebastian Moreno, Flickr / CC BY-ND)

Meanwhile, Global South nations are questioning how multilateral mechanisms like the Cali Fund characterise corporate responsibilities. In August, over 70 developing countries signed a statement objecting to a recent institutional memorandum of understanding between UN bodies which framed contributions to the Cali Fund as voluntary “donations” rather than rights-based benefit-sharing obligations. The countries called for the memorandum and related documents to be reviewed by parties to the CBD before further negotiations on the mechanism.

“Donations and royalties are completely different things,” said David Castro Garro, director of the Directorate of Genetic Resources and Biosafety within Peru’s environment ministry. “There is a lot of disagreement between countries over language that makes it sound as if the distribution of benefits is charity, when it is an obligation and a right of countries.”

Additionally, greater accountability within DSI databases will be needed if countries are expected to recognise the Cali Fund as part of their benefit-sharing systems, said Nithin Ramakrishnan, a senior researcher at the advocacy non-profit Third World Network.

“Thirty years after the CBD, many sequence databases still do not have a ‘country of origin’ metadata field for the sequences,” he told Dialogue Earth. “How can CBD parties reasonably be expected to take further measures when their rights on DSI remain inadequately protected by the current DSI sharing practices?”

The governance challenges

Raising money is just one step. The Cali Fund will also have to make sure the funds reach the countries and communities meant to benefit from them.

At least 50% of the collected funds will be allocated to the self-identified needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), with the rest going to developing nations to support biodiversity conservation and scientific research.

According to the CBD, most countries currently lack operational distribution and monitoring systems for benefit-sharing.

The World March of Indigenous Peoples through the streets of Belém, a side event of COP30 in Brazil in 2025. Half of the funds raised under the Cali Fund will be allocated to Indigenous communities (Image: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real, CC BY NC SA)

An Indigenous community that wants to do something with their river basin may not be experts in international finance, says Ayşegül Sırakaya, a biodiversity lawyer and founder of genetic resource sharing consultancy Abyss. “Will the fund get to [them] directly, or will it take place in a project-based way in which they have to have a certain administrative knowledge [to be able to apply for the funding]?”

June Rubis, a researcher and member of the Cali Fund Steering Committee who represents IPLCs for Asia, told Dialogue Earth that the current delay in capital flows could be an opportunity to solve these governance bottlenecks. “I would worry more if the money comes in quickly and then everything becomes rigid,” she said, referring to a situation where no one can agree on how to distribute it.

Rubis said IPLCs should be able to access funding directly rather than face additional administrative barriers or depend on intermediaries to distribute the funding. “We don’t want to receive funds and then be told what it’s to do,” she said.

Regulation, but not in a vacuum

The CBD’s approach to regulating DSI does not take place in a vacuum. Digital genetic data are also being regulated through other international agreements.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, also known as the High Seas Treaty, entered into force this year and aims to provide regulations concerning marine genetic resources in the world’s open sea areas. While the CBD relies on the premise of state sovereignty over national resources, the BBNJ Agreement includes the “common heritage of mankind” as a guiding principle. This establishes a mandatory benefit-sharing rule in which resources like funds and data are shared among signatories, contrasting with the CBD’s country-specific agreements.

The BBNJ Agreement and CBD regulate the same terminology – DSI – but they operate in fundamentally different legal contexts, said Sırakaya. “Having said that, there’s definitely a need for a high-level committee to discuss these things [benefit-sharing from DSI] across agreements.”

There is also the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system being designed by the World Health Organization. It links access to genetic sequences of “pathogens with pandemic potential” with provision of vaccines and substitutes to developing countries in times of epidemics.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Plant Treaty governs plant genetic resources related to food and agriculture. It is currently being reviewed to ensure agribusinesses using public genomic databases pay into a fund to support the advancement of agricultural development and small-scale farmers.

The Yerevan stakes

COP17 will test whether the Cali Fund can evolve from an agreement into a workable benefit-sharing mechanism.

In Yerevan, countries are expected to formally decide on contributors and the level of their funding. At COP16, they agreed that firms deriving considerable commercial benefit from DSI should contribute a share of their profits or revenues, having set indicative thresholds and rates. But how to determine company sizes and contribution levels was left to COP17, where the findings of a study on implications for revenue generation and economic competitiveness will be presented.

Thambisetty said countries should agree a target sum, which would let them work backward to a contribution formula. “A target sum focuses minds politically, allowing you to work backward to figure out how much large companies should pay and establish a contribution formula,” she said.

COP17 will also deal with the allocation of finances. In the COP16 process, countries agreed that the fund should support biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in developing countries, as well as scientific research, capacity-building and the needs of IPLCs. But it left the precise allocation formula to be decided in Yerevan.

Countries are also likely to consider wider questions about the mechanism’s operation, including potential alternative methods of sharing benefits and platforms for making DSI publicly accessible.

Schomaker emphasised the need to ensure a “better business case” than the Cali Fund currently has. “That means understanding where the money goes,” she said at the CBD press conference. “We also need to build more trust and confidence [among] the [resource] provider countries. This is a rights-based investment instrument and that has to be made clearer through the decisions that we are taking.”

Whatever COP17 results in for the Cali Fund, some experts say it is the actual implementation of the mechanism that will lead to valuable learnings. “There is definitely hope the Cali Fund could solve some issues. Could it solve everything? I’m not sure. But should we have to wait for every resolution to make a move?” said Sırakaya. “A lot could be resolved by actually testing the system on the ground.”