Image
The global biodiversity summit in Cali will operationalise a multilateral benefit sharing mechanism from the use of Digital Sequence Information (DSI) - digital files holding the genome sequence and related data of an organism.
As the interests of sovereign nations and indigenous communities rightly sit at the heart of these efforts, it is essential the voice of the international research community is also heard to avoid “unintended consequences”.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity requires anyone using genetic resources to gain consent from the country of origin and return a share of any benefits derived from their use.
At COP15 in Montreal, broad consensus was reached over the need to establish a fair and equitable system that will deliver benefit-sharing while protecting open access, supporting research and innovation, and promoting biodiversity conservation.
All nations have a sovereign right over their natural resources, including genetic resources, with local communities often acting as their guardians. The Earlham Institute advocates that any outcome from COP16 must deliver fair and equitable benefit sharing from DSI.
Researchers around the world, however, remain concerned that the implementation of the framework will introduce additional regulatory hurdles, paywalls, or other barriers that will make research involving DSI difficult or even impossible.
With a range of academic organisations in attendance at COP16, it is crucial these concerns are heard, the debates reflect the context of modern research, and the outcome does not increase the costs or regulatory burden on publicly-funded science.
Professor Neil Hall, Director of the Earlham Institute, said: “Every nation recognises the potential value of its natural resources and we must prevent this from being unfairly exploited.
“The Earlham Institute fully supports the global efforts to ensure that countries of origin benefit from the rewards of sharing digital sequence information. It is right that the international community is considering this important issue at the COP16 meeting in Cali this week.
“Collectively, we must find multilateral, effective, and equitable solutions to protect these nations from commercial exploitation. We hope the discussions in Cali this week will also consider the impact on the principles of open data which are fundamental to non-commercial research and development.
“The potential unintended consequences of onerous restrictions will risk obstructing and deterring the scientific discoveries that would benefit countries of origin the most.”
The benefits of sharing DSI can be enormous. It makes international collaborations simpler and more impactful, drives capacity-building initiatives, and accelerates knowledge sharing and research impact.
DSI is the currency of a range of basic and discovery science. This would often be too high risk for commercial companies to conduct but the outputs often underpin the future innovations they go on to develop.
The Earlham Institute is involved in a range of projects that will be impacted by the outcomes of these discussions, including its two strategic research programmes - Cellular Genomics and Decoding Biodiversity.
Over the years, the Institute has harnessed DSI to help improve food security in East Africa, contribute to global efforts to develop more climate-resilient crops, and delivered capacity-building projects in computational biology and genomics.