Multilateral benefit-sharing from digital sequence information will support both science and biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Open access to sequence data is a cornerstone of biology and biodiversity research, but has created tension under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Policy decisions could compromise research and development, unless a practical multilateral solution is implemented.

Fig. 1. Multilateral funding model for DSI benefit-sharing.

Open access to DSI in databases (center blue box) is de-coupled from benefit-sharing (light green box). The multilateral fund (dark green box) can collect funds from micro-levies, voluntary contributions, innovative finance, or from patent royalties. Funding on a national level (dark green arrow) is weighted by the amount of sequences deposited from an individual LMIC, and together with the substantial non-monetary benefit-sharing from DSI (e.g., through international collaborations; lower gray arrow) enables capacity building (especially in the area of genomics and bioinformatics) as well as the build-up of a corresponding research infrastructure. Capacity building improves monitoring, conservation, and sustainable use of biodiversity (dark blue boxes), creating a positive feedback loop that leads to a continuous increase in knowledge generation on biodiversity. Simultaneously, greater availability of DSI creates additional positive feedback loops for generating non-monetary and monetary benefits (gray arrows). The asterisk (*) emphasizes that the use of DSI, and hence the benefits generated, largely depend on the use of DSI originating from several different sources (i.e., countries).