Pharma Accused of 'Free-Riding on Nature' as $1bn Biodiversity Fund Raises Just $10,656

A landmark biodiversity fund designed to raise $1bn (£750m) a year from companies that profit from nature's genetics has received just $10,656 in commitments — of which only $7,085 has actually been deposited. As of Monday, at the start of the Cop17 biodiversity summit in Armenia, no major pharmaceutical company had contributed a single dollar.

The shortfall sits at the centre of a fight over who pays for nature. The Cali Fund, officially launched in February 2025, asks companies that use genetic information from organisms to give back 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue. It targets conservation in low-income countries, with at least half of the money directed to priorities set by Indigenous peoples and local communities.

How big is the gap between ask and outcome?

Very big. A study by Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA) found the top 15 pharmaceutical companies could have contributed $756m based on their performance last year, had they followed the fund's guidelines. In 2025, those same 15 companies generated about $161bn in profits, according to ZCA's research.

The comparison with shareholder payouts is starker. According to Zero Carbon Analytics, the total sum the top 15 companies gave to shareholders in 2025 was 175 times more than their suggested contribution to the Cali Fund.

"Look at how much profit these pharmaceutical companies are getting – and we're only asking for a tiny percentage," said June Rubis of Macquarie University, an Indigenous peoples and local communities representative from Asia who sits on the Cali Fund's steering committee.

"Definitely, they're free-riding" on nature, Rubis said. She added that businesses did not appear to recognise the importance of protecting nature or of supporting "communities who have been in the frontlines of defending biodiversity conservation and therefore their future profits".

Who has actually paid?

Three small private-sector firms, and nobody else. Since launch, the fund has received:

• $5,000 from Prozomix, a UK-based biotech firm
• $1,000 from TierraViva AI, also based in Britain
• $1,085 from E-Biom, a Belgian company

That is the entire corporate ledger. "More money has been spent on meetings talking about the Cali Fund than there is in the Cali Fund's coffers," said Brian O'Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature. He said it was too optimistic to expect companies to contribute voluntarily, and that they should be compelled to do so.

Why does the fund exist at all?

The Cali Fund answers a problem created by technology. Research has shifted from reliance on physical samples to use of digital sequence information (DSI) — large volumes of genetic data now stored in public databases. That shift opened loopholes in the old rules requiring payment for physical access to nature's genetics. The fund was designed to close them.

It is also part of a wider effort to plug a $700bn gap in funding for nature conservation. The Cali Fund is a key issue on the agenda at Cop17, the UN biodiversity conference under way this week in Yerevan.

"The future of health is written in nature's DNA," said Victoria Kalyvas, who authored the Zero Carbon Analytics analysis. "The pharmaceutical industry stands to lose a great deal from its destruction, as do patients."

What do the drugmakers say?

The industry does not dispute its reliance on nature. It disputes the design of the bill. Guilherme Cintra, director of innovation policy at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said the industry was committed to biodiversity but had "ongoing questions about the design and implementation of the mechanism".

"The current mechanism overlaps with existing law, relies on inaccurate assumptions about how data is used in the discovery of medicines, and asks companies to hand over a share of their total revenue, whether DSI was used to develop a medicine or not," Cintra said.

Companies argue the blanket contribution is inappropriate because not all medicines are built using DSI, and because the fund overlaps with existing national laws on access and benefit-sharing.

A spokesperson for Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical multinational, said the company recognised "the critical importance of biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to human health and the long-term resilience of healthcare systems", calling nature protection a core component of its environmental sustainability strategy. Sanofi made no commitment to contribute.

A spokesperson for the British biopharmaceutical company GSK said open access to DSI was "critical to enable continued medical innovation and rapid response to public health emergencies, including pandemics". GSK added: "We support the intent behind the Cali Fund and will make a decision regarding voluntary contributions when there is more information about how the Cali Fund will work alongside other national and multilateral access and benefit-sharing mechanisms."

Can the fund still scale?

Its operators say patience is normal at this stage. A spokesperson for the Cali Fund called the amount raised so far "disappointing but not entirely surprising", noting that "comparable financial instruments have generally taken two to three years before contributions began to scale [up]".

"Contributions will likely remain modest while the operational infrastructure is being completed and until the Cali Fund becomes better known," the spokesperson said. They added that discussions at Cop17 would give companies greater information, enabling them to come forward with commitments.

The arithmetic explains why the fight matters. Voluntary appeals have moved $7,085 in deposits against a $1bn annual target, while the industry that the fund's designers saw as its natural anchor waits for more detail before deciding whether to pay at all.