Two weeks of negotiations, hundreds of thousands of air miles flown, Ministers and heads of state attending, and yet, in the end, the United Nations biodiversity talks, COP16, in Cali in Columbia ended up as slightly less than the sum of its parts. Although there was some agreement, ultimately negotiations had to be suspended because the meeting was no longer quorate, leaving many important issues unresolved.
Let's start with what was agreed. Firstly, digital sequence information (DSI). Genetic information, digitally stored, is increasingly being used by agricultural and pharmaceutical companies in their quest to find new products.
The DSI agreement sets up a process whereby some companies will need to contribute 1% of their profits or 0.1% of their revenue into a fund to support the countries from where the data is gathered (these are usually nature rich and developing).