TWN Info Service on Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Jul22/02)
13 July 2022
Third World Network

CBD Working Group fails to advance on Digital Sequence Information as Conference of the Parties Looms

Austin, 12 July (Edward Hammond) – Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have failed to advance the text of a critical draft decision on Digital Sequence Information (DSI).

Discussions on DSI happened at the Fourth Meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in Nairobi on 21st to 26th June 2022.

It had been hoped that the draft decision could set the foundation of a global framework for fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from use of gene sequences. However, there was no consensus, and all operative elements of the draft decision are now heavily bracketed, 

With the text in disarray and with the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) now scheduled from 5th to 17th December in Montreal, the outcome of the CBD’s pandemic-delayed work on DSI is coming into doubt.

In principle, there is broad support, from both North and South, for the creation of a multilateral benefit sharing system for DSI. Such a system would permit a relatively unencumbered international flow of sequence information - key for the biotech, pharma, agricultural, and other industries - in return for monetary benefit sharing through an international fund supporting biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in developing countries.

But behind the broad, generalized support for a multilateral approach, there are radically different visions of how such a system would work, and the clashes between these different visions has resulted in the convoluted draft decision.

The unresolved issues around DSI can be clustered around two major axes where agreement has not been found. The first is the degree to which the system will be purely multilateral. That is, to what extent Parties might withhold particular sequence information from the multilateral system - for example, that of endemic plants - in favor of pursuing bilateral benefit sharing deals for that sequence information in the style of the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization.

This mix of bilateral and multilateral sequence information sharing into one approach has come to be called a “hybrid approach” or “hybrid system” in the discussions, and a number of Latin American countries are its firmest supporters. A hybrid system would likely require tracking and tracing of individual sequences, a possibility strongly opposed by Northern countries and felt to be likely unnecessary by Southern supporters of a more pure multilateral system.

There is little common understanding among countries on how a hybrid system would work in practice, particularly on how the burden of track and trace would be borne. Thus the concrete form(s) that hybrid system(s) would take, despite now being strongly represented (in brackets) in the text, is unclear to many Parties and observers.

The second major axis around which agreement has not been found relates to the scale of funding for, and orientation of, a multilateral benefit-sharing fund, if it is to be created by the decision. 

On one hand, Africa has long linked the creation of a multilateral system for DSI to ironclad commitments for robust, equitable funding for the GBF, long term global biodiversity goals which the Convention is developing in parallel to its discussions on DSI. By Africa and a number of experts’ reckoning, that figure could reach hundreds of billions of US dollars per year, all in benefit sharing linked to DSI.

At the extreme opposed to Africa and its allies, a few countries, most prominently including Japan, Switzerland, and South Korea, still question the need for serious benefit sharing around DSI at all.

And a vocal scientists’ group ostensibly supports a multilateral system, but its conception of multilateral benefit sharing is so different than that of Africa and other developing regions that the different concepts are impossible to reconcile.

The scientists’ vision to “solve” the DSI problem is to, in effect, rebrand the highly unequal status quo as a “new” multilateral benefit sharing system. Or, as the song goes, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. Except the new boss would be dubbed “multilateral”.

Indeed, the scientists’ group took the floor to offer its praise of the US, Europe, and Japan for the “global benefit” of those countries’ support for the dominant and inequitable international sequence database system. The International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) subsidizes Northern business and science by offering up patentable and otherwise commercially valuable sequences from around the world, without benefit sharing, and while paying little to no heed to the origin of the genetic resources that it hosts.

Thus, visions of a multilateral system range from a large-scale monetary benefit sharing systems redistributing hundreds of billions of dollars per year to support global biodiversity action, to a very different system that entrenches inequity by rebranding the status quo as ‘multilateral’.

Similarly, visions of the biological scope of a multilateral system range from including sequence information of nearly all biodiversity from all countries to hybrid approaches wherein countries hold back the sequence information of their endemic diversity in hopes of striking deals with individual users.

When Parties came together in a Contact Group in Nairobi, such differences of opinion were drawn out in an initial round of interventions. The Co-Leads of the Contact Group quickly decided to set up a Friends of the Co-Leads group and to close observer access to the discussion, a practice seldom used at the CBD.  DSI thus became the only closed negotiation group at the Nairobi meeting.

The Co-Leads are Gaute Voigt-Hanssen (Norway) and Lactitia Tchitwamulomoni (South Africa).

The move to meet behind closed doors was in part prompted by a reaction to Japan, which has not accepted an obligation to share benefits from DSI, and which has been promoting the participation of business groups in the talks. Some of these same groups, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) in particular, have previously articulated total opposition to benefit sharing for DSI.

By closing the meeting, the Co-Leads were also obliged by Convention practice to exclude civil society and even indigenous peoples, who are typically afforded strong representation in the CBD. The latter exclusion was particularly unfortunate given the strong support among Parties (and civil society) for indigenous peoples and local communities to have a central place in a multilateral benefit sharing system.

In the small, closed Friends of the Co-Lead’s group, an initial evening of talks on June 21st modestly moved forward by clearing the draft decision’s sparse preambular text, but progress stopped there. 

Efforts to reach consensus on operational language later in the week took more steps backwards than forwards, as text for nearly every option was introduced in nearly every place. No constituency appeared willing to compromise on any major issue and each insisted on inclusion of its text at relevant places in the draft decision.

A senior developing country negotiator called the resulting text “everything all mixed up together in a bucket with eggs on top,” an oblique and unflattering reference to the explosively overindulgent Monty Python character Mr. Creosote.

Dark humour aside, the largest changes in the text coming out of the meeting are many more references to hybrid approaches, which had not been prominent in earlier versions. The five-page draft decision (CBD/WG2020/4/L.3), completely enveloped in brackets, can be parsed by any side to represent its position, simply by choosing which phrases to retain.

At the Contact Group’s final report back to the Plenary on June 26th, it was announced that the Co-Leads will continue to conduct informal consultations in the period before COP-15, including receipt of an independent consultant’s report on options for DSI that has been commissioned by the Secretariat.

It was further discussed in the closing Plenary that a fifth meeting of the OEWG is tentatively planned, subject to the availability of resources and a suitable venue, for up to three days immediately before COP-15, which is scheduled for 5^th to 17^th December in Montreal. While this meeting has not been confirmed and an agenda has not been published, given the depth of disagreements on DSI that have emerged from Nairobi, it is quite likely that a 5th OWEG meeting will include a Contact Group focused on DSI.

With this antecedent, all indications continue to point toward a dramatic encounter between Parties at COP-15 in December, as the South, Africa in particular, angles for a transformative decision on multilateral benefit sharing for DSI that leapfrogs sequences over some of the impediments experienced in implementation of the Nagoya Protocol.

Many observers believe that to avert catastrophe in Montreal, Europe must urgently move beyond gratuitous rhetoric about its support for a multilateral system. That is, while the EU has frequently said it backs DSI multilateralism, it has made few practical moves to make such a system happen, and it has not put any real benefit sharing figures on the table.

The EU’s long-standing equivocation is now creating more private suspicions about its earnestness. Does the EU really back a more equitable multilateral system, or is its aim more cynical?  By staking out a virtuous position in principle, but without putting forward any details or visibly acting to stop the text-based negotiations from going into a tailspin, Europe’s convictions seem less clear.

Does Europe want to say it is taking the high road while letting the actual decision fall apart?

Latin American countries that favour hybrid approaches will also need to put skin on the bones of their proposals, as it seems unlikely that other regions will be persuaded to support hybrid models without more concrete articulation of how they would function in practice. This is particularly needed for how any tracking and tracing requirements would be implemented from technical and financial perspectives.

Participants in the DSI discussions presently await information on intersessional meetings and other activities. Whether these will lead towards meaningful progress for a DSI benefit sharing solution is still an open question. +