Big pharma accused of ‘free-riding on nature’ as global fund attracts just $7,000
Özet haber: The Cali Fund, set up to raise $1bn a year for biodiversity from drug companies, remains near empty
The Cali Fund, set up to raise $1bn a year for biodiversity from drug companies, remains near empty
Big pharmaceutical companies have been accused of “free-riding on nature”, after a landmark biodiversity fund that invites businesses to put some of their profits back into conservation was left virtually empty.
The Cali Fund set out to raise $1bn (£750m) annually, by asking companies that profit from nature’s genetics to contribute towards conservation in low-income countries. But more than 18 months after the fund was launched, it remains far below this target.
As of Monday, at the start of the Cop17 biodiversity summit in Armenia, the fund had received just $10,656 in commitments, of which $7,085 had been deposited.
No money has so far been given by major pharmaceutical companies, despite the industry’s reliance on genetic information from organisms around the globe for the development of lucrative new medicines.
The industry’s participation could prove pivotal to the fund’s success. A study by Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA) found the top 15 pharmaceutical companies could have contributed $756m based on their performance last year, if they had followed guidelines set out by the fund, which suggests companies make a voluntary contribution of 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue.
In 2025, the top 15 pharmaceutical companies generated about $161bn in profits, according to ZCA’s research.
“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, who is an Indigenous peoples and local communities representative from Asia and sits on the Cali Fund’s steering committee.
“Definitely, they’re free-riding” on nature, said Rubis, who 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”.
The Cali Fund is a key issue to be discussed at the UN biodiversity conference – Cop17 – in Yerevan, this week, and is part of wider efforts to plug a $700bn gap in funding for nature conservation.
At least half of the money from the Cali Fund will be directed towards areas identified as priorities by Indigenous peoples and local communities.
“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.”
According to Zero Carbon Analytics, the total sum given to shareholders by the top 15 companies in 2025 was 175 times more than the suggested contribution to the Cali Fund.
Ensuring that companies pay for their use of nature has become increasingly complex, due to advances in biotechnology that mean large volumes of genetic information, known as digital sequence information (DSI), can now be stored in public databases.
