Open genetic data and unclear rules keep biodiversity fund largely empty

A decade after countries first agreed to discuss the issue, the sharing of benefits from digital sequence information (DSI), the genetic data of plants, animals and microbes stored in online databases, has made little progress. This is despite a fund set up under the United Nations in 2024, which seeks to make corporations share part of their profits of benefiting from using genetic data from nature.

COP17, the UN biodiversity summit that ended on October 31 in Yerevan, Armenia, was expected to settle how the fund would work. Instead, countries deferred the key decisions to the next summit, COP18 in 2028.

The Cali Fund, named after the Colombian city where it was agreed, was expected to raise around $1 billion a year. As of November 10, 2026, it had received $10,588.

At COP17, countries were expected to settle a few questions left over from the previous summit in Cali. For example, which companies should pay, and how much? Should payments be linked to how much DSI a company uses? How can the online databases that hold DSI be made accountable to all countries? And how should the money be shared among countries and communities?

“Unfortunately, the preparations between the two COPs did not reach a point where COP17 could take a final call on them with proper information,” said Nithin Ramakrishnan, a senior researcher at the Third World Network (TWN). “So, they all relied on interim measures, and the goalpost has now shifted to COP18.”

“Much of the two years between the summits went on issues raised by industry as essential for money-in,” said Siva Thambisetty, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, who helped design the threshold payment rule adopted by consensus at COP16.

She added that the biggest issue was certificates. Companies, including those from the Global South, have sought certificates confirming that their payment covers their use of DSI, giving them legal certainty in return for paying into the fund. But companies obtain publicly available genetic data through many routes, and it is very challenging or impossible to confirm that every sequence was legally accessed.

A lot of time was also spent on the allocation methodology and on other similar issues, “which seems absurd” when there is hardly any money, she said.

When genes went digital

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which came into force in 1993, requires that the benefits from using genetic resources be shared with the countries and communities that conserve biodiversity. The Nagoya Protocol, in force since 2014, sets out how a company must seek permission before collecting a sample and agree on terms for sharing any profits.

But these rules apply to genetic material, meaning physical samples. “Because it refers to material, only physical resources are legally covered under the obligation to share monetary benefits,” said Thambisetty. Once a sample is sequenced and uploaded, the link to benefit-sharing is usually broken, unless the original contract covered sequence data or the database records where the sample came from.

Countries first took up the issue at COP13 in Cancún, Mexico, in December 2016. They agreed to study what the use of DSI meant for the CBD’s three objectives, including conservation, sustainable use and benefit-sharing. It then took six years just to agree that benefits from DSI should be shared. There was opposition. For instance, the European Union argued that access to information is not the same as access to genetic resources. The US, which isn’t a party to the CBD, claimed that DSI is “neither genetic material nor a genetic resource.” However, the developing countries group, including the African Group, India and the Latin American and Caribbean group (GRULAC) have been pushing for legally binding obligations on users to share benefits.

Finally, that agreement came at COP15 in Montreal in December 2022. Countries adopted a decision agreeing that benefits from the use of DSI should be shared fairly and equitably, through a global fund. At COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024, parties agreed to create a fund. The Cali Fund was launched in 2025.

Explaining its importance, Thambisetty said, “For two decades or more we have ignored the fact that most of the value of genetic resources lies in digital sequence information, which has not been covered by international law that requires equitable benefit sharing.”

“Communities cannot be expected to protect biodiversity while the commercial benefits of its genetic information flow elsewhere. The real test of the Cali Fund is whether companies contribute fairly and communities can access the money and decide how it is used. Otherwise, it risks becoming another global promise that changes little on the ground,” said Sayanta Ghosh of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a New Delhi-based non-profit.

Billions hoped, thousands paid

The Cali Fund takes a different route from the old system. Instead of tracking which sequence was used by whom, it asks large companies in sectors that rely on DSI, such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, animal and plant breeding and cosmetics, to pay a share of their earnings into a global fund.

The suggested rate is 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue. As of now, only big companies are expected to pay and the payment is voluntary. However, pharmaceutical trade lobbies have questioned these rates and have asked for a “radical rethink” of the rationale for the Cali Fund.

Half the money is meant for Indigenous peoples and local communities. This share is not tied to the specific community a sequence came from. It is meant as a general recognition of their stewardship of biodiversity, said Thambisetty.

A June 2026 study by the LSE found that 21,690 companies in 100 countries are large enough to be expected to pay. If all of them paid at the suggested rates, the fund would receive about $3.65 billion a year. One estimate, which accounts for the fact that not all sectors and companies would take part and that companies differ in how much they use DSI, was $929 million a year. A CBD document prepared for COP17 gives the same estimates.

The reality has been very different. The first payment of $1,000 came from TierraViva AI, a small UK firm, in 2025. Since then, four more small companies have paid in, taking the total to $10,588 as of November 10, 2026, according to the UN Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office, which administers the fund. None of the large pharmaceutical, agricultural or biotech firms the fund was designed for have paid.

The certificate deadlock

Companies that are expected to pay into the Cali Fund want a certificate in return, confirming that their payment covers the DSI they have used. The International Chamber of Commerce has asked that contributors be “deemed legally compliant” with the benefit-sharing laws of every CBD member, so that no government can ask them to pay more. That would require governments to recognise the Cali Fund’s certificates.

“Those who pay into the fund need legal certainty, and governments also need legal certainty about the use of DSI covered by the multilateral mechanism,” Ramakrishnan said. “That certainty can only come from a database that is accountable and transparent to all of them.”

The databases offer no such certainty. Genetic sequences are being uploaded to and downloaded from databases that are accountable to no one, with no traceability or benefit-sharing, said the Convention on Biological Diversity Handbook: Reference Guide and Indian Perspective, released on October 28 at COP17.

Most of this data sits in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), three linked databases in the U.S., Europe and Japan that anyone can access freely. Its data is downloaded 34 million times a year, but only 16% of sequences carry information on their country of origin, according to a 2024 study commissioned by the CBD.

Gustavo Soldati, a professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil and a member of Brazil’s National Biodiversity Commission (CONABIO), said accurate information on the origin of genetic sequences “may directly influence how financial benefits are distributed among countries”. The COP17 negotiating text asks for geographical origin to be developed as a criterion for sharing out Cali Fund money. “Without reliable data, biodiversity-rich countries risk being underrepresented in the allocation process,” he said.

“If the database functions without transparency, accountability and due diligence, you might even end up legitimising biopiracy,” Ramakrishnan said.

Soldati said anonymous access creates a basic imbalance. “Those who provide genetic resources are expected to document their origin and associated rights, while those who access and commercially exploit this information may remain unidentified,” he said. The problem is also geopolitical: GenBank, one of the largest of these databases, is based in the US, which is not a party to the CBD. “How can we ensure that these infrastructures respect the decisions adopted under the Convention when they are based in countries that are not legally bound by it?”

Ramakrishnan argued that the way to get companies to pay is to bring accountability and transparency into the DSI sharing system, so that governments can recognise the Cali Fund’s certificates, which would in turn give the confidence for companies to put money into the Cali Fund. Thambisetty argued that two elements seemed to be missing: public awareness, and a campaign explaining why companies are expected to pay, plus more information on what states can or have done to encourage companies above the threshold to contribute to the Cali Fund.

Beyond the money, Gustavo Soldati said that open science must also be judged by how fairly it shares benefits. “Today there is a strong emphasis on open access to genetic data, often originating from the Global South, but much less attention is given to ensuring equally open access to the benefits generated from these data,” he said.

Banner image: Farmers sell vegetables at an APMC market near Jamalpur, Ahmedabad. Companies using the genetic data of crops are expected to contribute to the Cali Fund. Image by Mananshah1008 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).