Abstract
BackgroundThe United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) formally recognized the sovereign rights of nations over their biological diversity. Implicit within the treaty is the idea that mega-biodiverse countries will provide genetic resources and grant access to them and scientists in high-income countries will use these resources and share back benefits. However, little research has been conducted on how this framework is reflected in real-life scientific practice.ResultCurrently, parties to the CBD are debating whether digital sequence information (DSI) should be regulated under a new benefit-sharing framework. At this critical time point in the upcoming international negotiations, we test the fundamental hypothesis of provision and use of DSI by looking at the global patterns of access and use in scientific publications.ConclusionOur data reject the provider-user relationship and suggest a far more complex information flow for DSI. Therefore, any new policy decisions on DSI should be aware of the high level of use of DSI across low- and middle-income countries and seek to preserve open access to this crucial common good.
Highlights
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) formally recognized the sovereign rights of nations over their biological diversity
Because there is a central repository for digital sequence information (DSI), namely, the International Nucleotide Database Collaboration, global analyses can be conducted to inform the debate around benefit sharing from DSI and test hypotheses
The data presented here show that the concept of a user-provider dichotomy from provision by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to use by high-income countries (HICs) for DSI is rejected
Summary
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the international policy mechanism to reduce species, habitat, and ecosystem loss on this planet. The three overarching goals of the CBD, agreed upon in 1992, are conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of this biodiversity, and fair and equitable benefit sharing from genetic resources. The third goal represents a political “balancing act” with the first two goals because it is intended to incentivize access and use of genetic resources (GR) so that benefits from use of biodiversity will flow back to the providing country, encouraging conservation, and supporting the first two goals.
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