COP16: Agenda, activities and summary of what's happening at the Cali Biodiversity Summit

The genetic sequences of thousands of the world's species can be used to create products for industry.Photo: Juan Pablo Rueda. EL TIEMPO

"This is a somewhat technical and unknown topic, but we have to make it democratic because the economy of the 21st century is based on it. It is the genetic material of animals and plants that is now being sequenced and put into digital databases, and private companies that use these genetic resources no longer know where they come from, so they do not pay benefits. Today we met with experts to talk about the reality of the use of genetic material from an indigenous, ethical and intellectual property perspective, and how other treaties have already dealt with this issue, and we came to the conclusion: we need to regulate better," the official said.

This proposal is not new, as it already emerged at COP15, held in the cities of Kunming (China) and Montreal (Canada), where the idea was raised, worked on for two years and now at COP16 could become a global agreement that generates a multilateral mechanism, that is, a document to which all 196 countries that are part of the conference must subscribe.

According to the head of the Colombian negotiating team at the COP, Jenny Bowie, the discussion is well advanced today and it is expected that a historic decision on this issue could be reached in Cali. However, there are still important debates on which no consensus has been reached. For example: how much should countries or companies that use these genetic resources pay; and who should pay, because there are countries that believe that only multinational companies should pay for the use of these sequences, and there are others that believe that small and medium-sized biotechnology companies should also pay

"We want to adopt this framework where these companies commit themselves to start contributing financial resources, which in turn will be distributed to countries to be used for the implementation of biodiversity protection and conservation. The resources depend on how we define the mechanism: it is not the same for 100 companies to pay as it is for a thousand companies to pay. And therein lies the discussion: some want big companies to pay, others want large and medium-sized companies to pay, and there are even voices that say all companies should pay. In Colombia, we believe that it should be the multinationals that contribute to these mechanisms," says Bowie.

Although the discussion has only just begun, the atmosphere is positive, and hundreds of voices have pointed out that this could be one of the great legacies of the summit. One of these voices is that of the current CEO and Head of Natural Solutions of the Bezos Earth Fund, who in an interview with EL TIEMPO highlighted the importance of our country promoting this debate. "This issue of digital genetic information could help with the financial issue (for conservation), but it is one of the approaches that many people have not focused on. For me, it could be the great opportunity of COP16, if a global agreement is reached on this, which would probably be what defines COP16," stressed Samper.

The great powers

The big biotech companies are most interested in the outcome of this discussion because they are the ones who use genetic sequences to create molecules and later products derived from biodiversity. According to Martha Isabel Gómez, a doctoral candidate in political studies at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, and María Camila Rodríguez, a student of government and international relations at the same university, a case that illustrates this perfectly is that of stevia.

The stevia plant, native to the Gran Chaco, has been cultivated since ancient times by the indigenous peoples of South America, especially the Guarani, who have long been aware of its medicinal and pharmacological properties. At the end of the 20th century, it became famous as a natural sweetener far superior to sugar, and today there are alleged plants derived from stevia, as well as new production processes that have been patented as sweeteners in the United States, Canada, and Japan, among other countries. However, neither indigenous peoples nor their countries have benefited from these patents, according to Externado researchers.

Biotechnology powerhouses such as Japan, Korea and the United States are making the most of genetic sequences.Photo: Juan Pablo Rueda. EL TIEMPO

"Due to the different positions of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, there will most likely be a clash of powers at this conference. The tendency of developed countries is not to include ISD in the sharing of benefits to providers of genetic resources, which are mostly developing countries and indigenous and local communities," the researchers said.

According to Andres González Barrios, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Food Engineering at the Universidad de los Andes, this is because it is these countries that currently have the technical and technological capacity to take advantage of the genetic sequences available. In other words, it's not just about being able to access a database and the sequence, it's about having the capacity to turn that pile of digital code into a tangible product.

"Biotechnology powerhouses like the United States and Korea now have the capacity to develop biofactories or sequences from this DNA that can be used in products like creams. It's not as simple as finding a sequence and going into production. And that is what differentiates us from other countries and makes us more vulnerable, because these big countries can make more profit out of it," says Gonzalez.

The situation becomes even worse when we add the factor of artificial intelligence, which makes it possible to generate even faster developments for large multinationals and to create "new Stevias" that do not exist anywhere else in the world except in the computers and digital servers where they work.

Nagoya

The discussion that is taking place in Colombia has, from the beginning, had a problem that the country seems to have solved. And that is that today everything that has to do with material and digital genetic sequences is discussed through the Nagoya Protocol, an agreement that Colombia helped to create, but today is not in our legislation because Congress has not ratified it. In this sense, the Minister of the Environment, Susana Muhamad, assured that the negotiations would take place outside the Nagoya Protocol and within the central negotiations of the Summit, through a financial mechanism. Because we have not ratified Nagoya, we cannot vote or discuss issues there.

For experts such as economist Fernando Casas, who co-chaired the negotiations that produced the Nagoya Protocol, this could be a solution for the country to promote discussion of issues related to digital genetic sequences. That is to say: Colombia cannot discuss anything in the Nagoya Protocol, but through a financial mechanism outside of Nagoya, it could discuss digital genetic sequences. "The Nagoya Protocol has its own financial mechanism, but with a proposal in the Kunming-Montreal Framework, it could be received by states," he added.