A new global fund for conservation seeks to make corporations share part of their profits of benefiting from using genetic data from animals, plants or microorganisms in nature. Named the Cali Fund, the new finance mechanism was born out of the recently concluded United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity summit, or COP16, held in Cali, Colombia. The fund is expected to raise up to $1 billion yearly for conserving biodiversity. Half of the amount in the U.N.-controlled fund is expected to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities either directly or through national governments. Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso reported from COP16 that countries had agreed that companies in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, biotech and cosmetics, which profit from biodiversity, “should” contribute 1% of profits or 0.1% or revenue linked to their use of genetic information from nature, also called digital sequence information (DSI). Companies like Moderna, the U.S. pharma giant that used DSI from hundreds of respiratory viruses to develop its COVID-19 vaccine, agreed in principle to pay as long as the fees are voluntary, which some COP16 attendees reacted negatively to, Catanaso reported. Some DSI experts also raised concerns that the use of the term “should” not only means the fund is voluntary but also that the payment rates are “indicative,” according to Carbon Brief. “If you acknowledge the biodiversity crisis as a user of DSI, [and] you acknowledge that you depend on biodiversity for your own organization, [then] you should also agree that protecting that biodiversity takes money,”…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post New ‘Cali Fund’ plans to make companies pay for benefiting from nature first appeared on EnviroLink Network.