Even in the warm summer sun, the stagnant pools and rugged rock faces of North Yorkshire’s Ribblehead Quarry feel like an unlikely frontier of the AI industrial revolution. Standing beside a waterfall bursting from the fractured rock, Bupe Mwambingu reaches into the green mud behind the cascade and emerges with a handful of algae.
Balancing precariously on the rocks, the researcher passes the dripping mass to her colleague Emma Bolton, who notes its GPS coordinates and the acidity, temperature and light exposure on an app on her phone.
“Be careful,” Bolton tells Mwambingu as she teeters on the edge of the waterfall and they move on to another part of the former limestone quarry, searching for more dirt and debris.
The duo, who work for London-based startup Basecamp Research, collect genetic information from organisms lurking in the nooks and crannies of rocks. In the past, scientists who wanted to develop new products using a rare lichen, microbe or fungus might have to visit its habitat and collect a sample. Now, the genetic codes derived from these organisms are almost always exchanged digitally, via genetic signatures known as digital sequence information (DSI).
This exchange is now at the center of an international battle over who owns the genetic data of the natural world—and who should profit from the billions of dollars in discoveries that flow from it. In October, world leaders will gather in Cali, Colombia, at Cop16, the global biodiversity summit, to try to achieve a world first on the subject.
There are so many bacteria and new species and really groundbreaking applications
Emma Bolton, researcher
Low-income countries, home to much of the world’s biodiversity, hope it can free up billions of dollars to conserve the rainforests, lakes and oceans where such organisms live.
Examples of what is at stake are growing every year. The discovery of the heat-resistant Thermus aquaticus Bacteria in the geysers of Yellowstone National Park in 1966 became a crucial ingredient for rapidly copying DNA in the polymerase chain reaction process used in Covid-19 tests. Plastic-eating bacteria could be a breakthrough for recycling.
Treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are being developed using a drug synthesized from snowdrops, and researchers are looking at whether molecules in chestnut leaves can neutralize drug-resistant bacteria. Bolton’s sister, who has leukemia, is being treated with a drug derived from a sea sponge.
“Before,” Bolton says, “I would walk around and not really realize how much biodiversity there is in every little thing you look at. Now I want to taste everything.” She and Mwambingu move on to a shallow pool of red and yellow that looks like it’s on the edge of a volcano. They stop again to take samples.
“There are so many bacteria and new strains and … really groundbreaking, life-saving applications,” she says.
Access to the digital genetic codes of the microbes collected in this quarry is sold to feed voracious artificial intelligence models, generating potential new discoveries of drugs, proteins and materials that could one day be worth billions of pounds.
Companies are not required to pay for access to digital forms of biodiversity, even if they lead to lucrative commercial discoveries. Scientists working in industry have free access to large databases of digital biodiversity data, but the information is often not even labelled with the country of origin.
The debate over the ethical use of data from nature – and who should benefit from it – is fierce. The natural world has long been the basis of commercial discovery, particularly in medicine..
But there is growing anger in some countries, who say they are being cut off from the financial benefits of their biodiversity, while digital sequencing allows pharmaceutical companies and others to commercialize their flora, fauna and other life forms without sharing in the profits. They accuse those who harvest and monetize genetic information of “biopiracy.” And they propose a solution: a global system to regulate the sharing of DSI that would force companies to pay for the genetic information they use.
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Tensions over the issue threatened to spill over into the 2022 international biodiversity talks in Montreal, with some countries warning they would walk out of negotiations unless efforts were made to resolve the issue. Eventually, countries agreed to set up a fund. But details of how it will actually work are still undecided, and it is expected to become one of the most divisive issues in Colombia..
This issue is at the heart of the ongoing tensions in the UN negotiations on biodiversity. Countries in the North want to focus on nature conservation, while many countries in the South want to focus on how nature can be exploited sustainably to enable economic development.
Making caring for nature more profitable than destroying it is always what has been missing
Pierre du Plessis, Cop15 negotiator
Any agreement faces significant headwinds. A global system to monitor and distribute DSI benefits could cost millions of dollars to set up, and there is little clarity about where the money would come from. Whatever is agreed, it will not be legally binding and its implementation will depend on the goodwill of governments and multinationals.
“The whole issue will be about the legality of the Cop decisions,” says Pierre du Plessis, a Namibian negotiator at Cop15 who advises African countries on DSI. “There will be a Cop decision and then it will be up to everyone to play it nice and turn it into a resource mobilisation engine for biodiversity management.”
“Making it more profitable to care for nature than to destroy it is always what has been missing since this UN convention was adopted,” he says. “I’m still optimistic that people will see it as the right thing to do.”
The threat that some countries will restrict access to DSI now hangs over the debate. Sharing the genetic code of Covid-19 was crucial to the rapid creation of vaccines, and restrictions could hamper future scientific research. Universities, research institutions and companies also face increasing reputational risks over their use of data.
Related: What is Cop15 and why is it important for all life on Earth?
In 2019, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, a leading genetics laboratory in Cambridgeshire, was accused of misusing African DNA and was asked to return samples it had collected from indigenous communities in southern Africa. A whistleblower alleged that the DNA information was used to develop a medical research tool that could have been used commercially.
In the early 2000s, the Kenya Wildlife Service threatened legal action against Genencor and Procter & Gamble, alleging that enzymes from a soda lake in the country were being used in a cleaning product.
Companies like Basecamp have been set up to help researchers and companies avoid those disputes. Under Basecamp’s system, the owner of the biodiversity site receives a royalty if it successfully contributes to a commercial discovery – voluntarily implementing a system similar to the one it is hoped will be negotiated in Cali.
With its team of data scientists and professional explorers, the company has sampled ice caps in Iceland, under the sea off Malta, and national parks in Malawi, with microbial data flowing back to the same hub. It has received significant backing from Silicon Valley over the past three years.
Basecamp has already paid royalties to sites where samples have begun the process of becoming a commercial discovery. Ribblehead, run by the Wild Ingleborough nature restoration project, received a modest £250, but that figure is expected to rise as the commercial product develops.
“It’s really remarkable,” says Andrew Hinde, a reserve manager at Wild Ingleborough. “It may not be the most exotic location on Earth, but we seem to be able to produce these rare bits of biodiversity.”