In the past, explorers dreamed of traveling to countries like Brazil, finding a “miracle” plant used by local people to treat disease, and using it to create a drug that brings in millions of dollars. Today, technological breakthroughs have made it so companies no longer have to touch the plant at all.
By aggregating and comparing the genetic information of thousands of biological resources from countries all over the world, companies can create blockbuster products derived from nature without ever leaving the lab. But what do they owe the countries for profiting from their resources? What do they owe the indigenous and local communities who preserved and stewarded those resources, making the collection of genetic data possible?
Digital Sequence Information (DSI) is the genetic data that comes from biological materials like plants, animals, bacteria and viruses. It sparked innovations that benefit everyone, from the COVID vaccine to a detergent that works just as well in cold water as it does in hot. It’s a technology that has the potential to impact every aspect of our lives, from food and medicine to fighting climate change. But to do so, we need to find a way to protect sensitive data derived from indigenous lands, territories and waters while ensuring DSI stays as open and accessible as possible.
The Convention on Biological Diversity has long sought to find a way to ensure the benefits from commercial innovations are shared with countries and indigenous and local communities who steward these biological materials. But attempts to address these issues at the international level foundered in 2019, when concerns over DSI halted negotiations for the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
John de la Parra, Director of the Global Food Portfolio at The Rockefeller Foundation, and Julian Portilla, Senior Mediator and Program Director at the Meridian Institute, have a deep understanding of the promise of DSI, and both were concerned about the international stalemate. In May, 2022, they brought together a global group representing industry, indigenous and local communities, and civil society at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Bellagio Center). Their goal was to advance an open and equitable vision for DSI, one that enables researchers to develop innovative medicines and products while supporting those who steward critical biological resources.
The seeds planted at that conference are already blossoming, with the inclusion of DSI in the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2024 adoption of a landmark international agreement on the sharing of benefits from DSI, and they continue growing today.
These conversations weren't happening this way anywhere else. There wasn't another room where people were actually making the decisions. This was the place. This group of people. These organizations. And we did the work together.
John de la ParraDirector, Global Food Portfolio, The Rockefeller Foundation,
Why is it important for there to be international regulations around the use of DSI?
John
The information powering these innovative medicines and products is often only possible because of the stewardship of indigenous peoples and local communities. I’m an ethnobotanist by training, and my research is on how indigenous people use plants as food and medicine. One constant issue in my field is how to make sure that we provide people with free and prior-informed consent for the usage of their materials. How can the people who have stewarded these resources for so long access and share in the benefits that others generate with them?
Julian
Rules around digital sequence information are important on two fronts. First, we need to ensure that the private sector has a way to compensate indigenous peoples and local communities for the use of materials derived from their lands, waters and territories. This could bring significant and sustainable funding to protect biodiversity. Second, DSI can unlock major advances in many different fields, but only if researchers are able to access it. Science is collaborative, with every piece of new knowledge built on centuries of prior discoveries. We need to make sure researchers can freely share DSI so they can develop innovations that benefit the world.
How did the 2022 Bellagio Center convening around DSI come about, and what did it accomplish?
John
The Rockefeller Foundation came to the issue through the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, a global effort to develop standardized methods to comprehensively measure the chemical constituents of the world’s foods. When we heard the concerns of stakeholders about what would be done with the digitized information, how it might be shared and how it might impact sensitive groups, The Rockefeller Foundation recognized the need to support collective leadership in a difficult space and help advance the global conversation.
The 2019 negotiations made it clear that the concerns around DSI weren’t going to be solved in one of these high-profile, very structured public meetings. There needed to be spaces where people were free to talk openly and address difficult issues head-on. In advance of the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP 15), we brought together representatives from industry, indigenous and local communities, scientific experts and others to discuss how we could break the stalemate and reach an international agreement on DSI.
Julian
I think of meetings in terms of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects. The physical setting at the Bellagio Center is wonderful, and you saw the spiritual part in a guitar-and-folk-singing hang-out on the final night that really brought everyone together. But it was the emotional part where things really came to a head.
The blowup happened on the second day, around whether there would be a multilateral process or bilateral agreements between individual countries and the companies using DSI from their territories. Half the room felt that multilateralism was the only option, as it would be impossible to get compensated bilaterally for digital resources. But the representatives from the Global South had no trust that the multilateral system would actually pay them. This was clearly the tension point we needed to address. So we stopped, broke everyone into small groups and talked through what it would take to build that trust. The skeptical parties said, “Show us it works. We want to try before we buy.” That’s where an idea for a seed fund was born, some way for parties and industry to set up a system that was tentative until it could be proven.
John
We may not have solved everything, but we got buy-in on those two core pieces – multilateral arrangements and a global fund – which wound up being incorporated into the Global Biodiversity Framework, a historic agreement that laid out clear international goals and targets around biodiversity protection, data collection and usage, and benefit sharing.. Two years later, the Cali Fund launched to enable industries commercially benefitting from biodiversity to contribute to its conservation. It’s still a multilateral agreement, and half of everything that comes into the fund is designated for direct allocation to indigenous peoples and local communities working to save nature.
How did you build on the progress made at the Bellagio Center convening?
Julian
We started by taking the conversation to a wider group of industry representatives – done with the support of the German and Belgian governments – followed by a series of 10 convenings between industry, indigenous peoples and parties from the Global North and South. We also commissioned several technical papers to analyze different aspects of the issue, from economics to law to science.
John
Much has been accomplished so far, from the initial agreement on DSI in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to the launch of the Cali Fund at COP 16 in 2024. The Rockefeller Foundation’s early investment signaled institutional support, helping unlock broader commitment from governments and funders to address equity in DSI. Two years from now, we’ll have the actual nuts and bolts of how all of these pieces work. But we’re not over the finish line.
What lessons from this process can be applied to other international issues?
Julian
You have to listen, especially for the things that you don’t want to hear. We came to this issue because our partners at the Periodic Table of Food Initiative showed us a clear obstacle that needed to be addressed. Responding to that opportunity in the moment shows the importance of flexibility.
John
People often talk about the need to bring everybody to the table, but it can’t stop there. You have to go to the tables of the people who have a stake in this issue. It’s only by sticking with them and letting them have their full say that you build trust. If we hadn’t made sure that members of indigenous and local communities were in the room and centered their voices throughout the process, these efforts would never have worked.
Julian
When we surveyed the people who participated in the meeting, they told us that trust-building matters. One of our less-visible contributions was helping people get to know each other in a less-formal way. At the big meetings, they could pull each other aside and say, “Here’s what I’m thinking,” or “I don’t understand where you’re coming from.” The relationships that they built allowed them to have those informal conversations and work together in constructive ways.
What makes you hopeful about how this issue is progressing, and what worries you?
John
One worry that is becoming alleviated is that these data would be made inaccessible to researchers. Only commercial users are required to make payments under this structure. We want to ensure that as much data as possible remains accessible to researchers, while fully respecting Indigenous and local communities’ rights to decide how and where their data are shared. The fact that the perspectives of indigenous peoples, local communities and countries in the Global South are centered in the conversation makes me hopeful as well. Most of all, I’m hopeful that this process will bring resources to the creators and protectors of the data, so that they can continue to safeguard biodiversity.
Julian
COP 15 and COP 16 advanced the conversation around DSI so that it can be a source of financing for nature around the world. That gives me hope. One worry I have is that the means by which industry and contributors to this fund will be credited for having contributed is still unclear. It comes down to incentives. You can always choose to participate or avoid any system, so it needs to be crystal clear why industry would want to participate. That’s our focus in the inter-session between COP 16 and 17.
John
Starting at or after COP 17, money will begin to flow into this fund. But there are a lot of open questions before we get there. How can we demonstrate when companies are using DSI? How can the UN allocate money directly to indigenous peoples and local communities around the world? We’ve got work to do to ensure there are innovative finance mechanisms to bolster the Cali Fund, such as green bonds, biodiversity credits and others. We’ve got the rebar set up, and we’re starting to pour the concrete, But the roof and walls and doors are yet to be built, so there’s still work to be done.
Looking back at all that has happened since 2022, de la Parra is grateful for having the right people in the right place at the right time “These conversations weren’t happening this way anywhere else. There wasn’t another room where people were actually making the decisions,” he said. “This was the place. This group of people. These organizations. And we did the work together.”
Learn More:
- Read the Meridian Institute’s overview on Digital Sequence Information.
- Learn more about how the the Cali Fund protects biodiversity and supports Indigenous and local communities.
- Read John de la Parra’s article on how The Rockefeller Foundation is following Indigenous and frontline leadership to a regenerative future.