COP16 Talks in Colombia Adopt a Novel Way to Pay for Conservation

Diplomats from roughly 180 countries ended two weeks of environmental talks on Saturday after agreeing on a new fund that would shift some of the profits from nature’s DNA to global conservation efforts.

The agreement calls for companies that make money from genetic information stored in databases, known as digital sequence information, to pay into a fund as a sort of fee for the use of biodiversity.

Scientific advances have made it easier and cheaper for researchers to sequence genetic material. That means there are now vast amounts available in databases for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, biotechnology and other companies to analyze as they seek to develop new products.

Delegates at the talks, known as COP16, shorthand for the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, called the agreement an important breakthrough.

“Conservation is mostly funded by governments and philanthropy,” said Amber Scholz, who leads the science policy department at Leibniz Institute DSMZ, a German research institute that focuses on microbial and cellular biodiversity. “Now, businesses that profit from biodiversity will pay into a new fund.”

The final declaration made the fund voluntary, saying that companies “should” contribute.

The agreement lays out specifics on how much they should pay: 1 percent of their profits or 0.1 percent of their revenue, as a guideline. Governments are “invited” to take legislative or other measures to require companies to contribute.