The Cali Fund’s limited contributions reveal why biodiversity benefit-sharing needs stronger institutional accountability, predictable financing and equitable returns for countries and communities.
At the UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan, a modest financial figure revealed an uncomfortable truth about the global biodiversity economy. As of 26 October 2026, the Cali Fund had received just $8,990. Established to channel commercial benefits from nature's genetic information towards biodiversity conservation, the fund has struggled to attract contributions from industries that increasingly depend on those resources.
The amount is small, but the contradiction it exposes is substantial. Scientific and commercial capabilities to extract value from biodiversity have advanced rapidly. The institutions responsible for ensuring that a fair share of this value returns to nature have not kept pace.
Consider digital sequence information (DSI), the genetic information obtained from biological resources and made accessible through databases. A genetic sequence from a plant or microorganism can support pharmaceutical research, crop improvement or industrial biotechnology without requiring repeated access to the original biological material. This openness has transformed scientific collaboration, but it has also complicated conventional access-and-benefit-sharing arrangements designed around physical genetic resources.
The Cali Fund, established under the Convention on Biological Diversity and launched in February 2025, attempts to address this imbalance. Large commercial users of DSI in specified sectors are encouraged to contribute 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue, with at least half the resources intended to support Indigenous peoples and local communities.
The ambition is considerable. Research by the London School of Economics estimates that the mechanism could mobilise $3.6 billion annually under full participation, or approximately $929 million under a modelled voluntary-participation scenario. Another analysis released during COP17 estimated that 15 leading pharmaceutical companies could collectively have contributed $756 million for 2025 under the indicative formula. These are illustrative estimates, not established corporate liabilities, but they demonstrate the potential scale of benefit-sharing.
The difficulty lies in the mechanism's voluntary architecture. Companies that contribute incur an immediate financial cost, while competitors may continue benefiting from publicly accessible genetic information without making comparable payments. Such arrangements create a familiar problem: collective benefits depend on individual decisions that carry few consequences for non-participation.
However, the solution is not simply to impose uniform payments. Businesses have raised legitimate concerns about defining qualifying DSI use, overlapping national obligations and legal certainty. The disagreement at COP17 over contribution certificates illustrates this challenge. Companies seek assurance that participation will not expose them to multiple claims, while biodiversity-rich countries are concerned that certificates could weaken existing benefit-sharing rights.
These concerns require careful institutional design rather than indefinite reliance on corporate goodwill.
A significant development came on 23 October, when the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation released guidance encouraging investors to examine corporate exposure to DSI and associated benefit-sharing responsibilities. This opens another avenue for accountability. If investors begin assessing how companies depend on genetic information and whether they contribute to its conservation, biodiversity benefit-sharing could become a consideration in corporate governance rather than an occasional philanthropic commitment.
India has an important opportunity to influence this transition. Its biodiversity wealth and established pharmaceutical, agricultural and biotechnology industries place it on both sides of the benefit-sharing equation. During COP17, India reaffirmed support for the multilateral DSI mechanism, including the Cali Fund, while emphasising predictable finance, technology transfer, capacity-building and national circumstances.
India also has relevant domestic experience. On 24 October, the National Biodiversity Authority reported that more than ₹204 crore had been released through access-and-benefit-sharing arrangements. A recent disbursement of approximately ₹1.04 crore to State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils demonstrated how commercial and research use of agricultural biological resources can generate resources for biodiversity-related initiatives.
Although arrangements governing physical biological resources cannot be directly transferred to digital information, India’s experience offers lessons in institutional responsibility, financial traceability and benefit distribution.
A credible international mechanism should therefore address three priorities. First, establish proportionate expectations and transparent reporting for major commercial DSI users, while protecting open scientific research. Second, clarify how contributions interact with national legislation without weakening community rights or creating overlapping financial obligations. Third, develop allocation mechanisms that recognise biodiversity stewardship, scientific-capacity gaps and meaningful community participation.
The last priority is particularly important. An allocation system heavily influenced by where genetic sequences are documented could disproportionately favour countries with advanced research infrastructure rather than those bearing the costs of biodiversity conservation. Equitable benefit-sharing must account for this imbalance.
Financial transfers must also demonstrate value beyond accounting. Transparent disbursement, credible ecological indicators, community participation and independent assessment are essential if benefit-sharing is to support measurable conservation outcomes.
The Cali Fund cannot replace public biodiversity expenditure or compensate for policies that continue to degrade ecosystems. Nevertheless, it can establish an important principle: commercial dependence on nature should carry corresponding responsibilities for sustaining it.
The real failure would not be the fund’s modest initial balance, but allowing voluntary participation to become a permanent substitute for accountability.
Nature's genetic information has become a global economic asset. Ensuring that its value also supports biodiversity conservation is no longer simply a financing question. It is a test of whether global biodiversity governance can deliver fairness alongside innovation.
