National leaders are scheduled to meet in China later this year to finalize a new strategic plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a 30-year-old global pact that sets decadal goals for preserving species and ecosystems.
Last week, however, negotiators in Geneva reached an impasse. A major stumbling block is how the world should share billions of bits of genetic data stored on computers around the world.
The debate over these data—known as digital sequence information (DSI)—is new, but it echoes a long-standing point of contention. Developing nations that are rich in biodiversity, such as those in the tropics, have argued that more developed nations have exploited their natural heritage for commercial gain—for example, by using plants collected in the tropics to develop new crops or drugs—without sharing any of the revenue or benefits.
Now, some countries are asking for tracking and tracing of all individual sequences in the databases and for conditions that would prohibit open access. This would require tracking billions of data transactions for millions of users. We actually don’t think there’s a technical way to do this. But even if there was, you would spend so much money on the technology and the bureaucracy, you would never be in the black.
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Many scientists, meanwhile, have a different worry: that imposing new regulations on sharing DSI could hamper research and damage international collaboration in science.
