A fund left virtually empty

The Cali Fund was set up to collect $1bn (£750m) a year from companies that profit from nature's genetics, with the money earmarked for conservation in low-income countries. As Cop17 opened in Armenia on Monday, the fund had received $10,656 in commitments, of which only $7,085 had actually been deposited. No major pharmaceutical company has contributed anything, despite the industry's reliance on genetic information to develop medicines.

Since the fund's official launch in February 2025, just three small deposits have arrived:

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

What companies could have paid

The gap between expectation and reality is wide. According to a study by Zero Carbon Analytics, the top 15 pharmaceutical companies could have contributed $756m based on their performance last year had they followed the fund's guidelines. Those guidelines ask for a voluntary contribution of 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue.

The research also found:

• •The top 15 companies generated about $161bn in profits in 2025
• •Total shareholder payouts by those companies in 2025 were 175 times more than the suggested contribution

Victoria Kalyvas, author of the Zero Carbon Analytics analysis, said: "The future of health is written in nature's DNA" - adding that the pharmaceutical industry and patients stand to lose from its destruction.

'Definitely, they're free-riding'

June Rubis of Macquarie University, an Indigenous peoples and local communities representative from Asia on the Cali Fund steering committee, said companies were being asked for only a tiny percentage of their earnings. "Definitely, they're free-riding" on nature, she said.

Rubis added that businesses did not appear to recognise the importance of supporting the communities who have been in the frontlines of defending biodiversity conservation - and therefore their future profits.

The fund is a key issue at Cop17 in Yerevan this week, where it forms part of wider efforts to plug a $700bn gap in funding for nature conservation. At least half of the money from the Cali Fund is to be directed towards areas identified as priorities by Indigenous peoples and local communities.

Industry pushes back

The pharmaceutical industry has criticised the fund, arguing that a blanket amount is inappropriate because not all medicines are built using digital sequence information (DSI), and that the fund overlaps with existing laws. Advances in biotechnology mean large volumes of DSI can now be stored in public databases, which makes payment schemes complex - and the fund was specifically designed to plug the loopholes that emerged as research shifted from physical samples to the use of DSI.

Guilherme Cintra, who leads innovation policy at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said the industry remains committed to biodiversity but told negotiators it still has questions to resolve over how the mechanism is designed and put into practice. In his view, the current mechanism overlaps with existing law, rests on inaccurate assumptions about data use in drug discovery, and asks companies to hand over a share of their total revenue whether DSI was used to develop a medicine or not.

Some companies pointed to intent rather than commitment. A Sanofi spokesperson said the company recognised "the critical importance of biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to human health" and healthcare resilience. A GSK spokesperson said open access to DSI is critical for medical innovation and pandemic response: "We support the intent behind the Cali Fund and will make a decision regarding voluntary contributions" once more information is available.

What happens at Cop17

Brian O'Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said voluntary expectations were not working. "More money has been spent on meetings talking about the Cali Fund than there is in the Cali Fund's coffers," he said, arguing that companies should be compelled rather than expected to contribute.

A Cali Fund spokesperson described the amount raised so far as "disappointing but not entirely surprising", noting that comparable instruments typically took two to three years before contributions scaled up. The spokesperson said "Contributions will likely remain modest while the operational infrastructure is being completed" and until the fund is better known, with discussions at Cop17 in Yerevan this week expected to help companies commit.