GoKawiilCali Fund for genetic-data sharing collects just $10,588 from biotech firms
Two years after UN biodiversity talks created the Cali Fund to collect payments from companies using publicly available genetic sequence data, only a handful of small biotech firms have contributed, totaling $10,588. The fund had been projected to potentially raise as much as $1 billion annually, but actual contributions remain minimal, according to Amber Scholz, a microbiologist involved in negotiating the fund. Prozomix, a UK biotech firm, has given $5,000, the largest single contribution so far.
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The shortfall suggests the voluntary payment system set up at the 2024 UN biodiversity summit may lack the incentives or enforcement needed to get larger pharmaceutical and biotech companies to contribute, which could undermine the fund's goal of channeling money to biodiversity-rich but resource-poor countries. Scholz's comment that the result is disappointing points to a gap between the ambitions negotiators had for addressing so-called biopiracy and the fund's real-world uptake. If larger firms continue to abstain, pressure could grow for binding rules rather than voluntary pledges.
- The Cali Fund has collected only $10,588 total, far below early estimates of up to $1 billion a year.
- Only small biotech firms, like UK-based Prozomix, have contributed so far, with Prozomix giving the largest sum, $5,000.
- The fund was created in 2024 to address concerns from biodiversity-rich nations about free use of genetic data by wealthier countries' industries.
Source: nature.com — Dinneen, 2026-11-03
Published there as: “Biotech firms are meant to pay to use Earth’s genetic data. They’re not.”
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