Big pharma accused of ‘free-riding on nature’ as global fund attracts just $7,000

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.

Digital sequencing was on the agenda at an August meeting in Nairobi of the body overseeing implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Photograph: Danny Skilton/ENB/IISD

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.

The Cali Fund was designed to plug loopholes that have emerged as research has shifted from a reliance on physical samples to use of DSI.

However, pharmaceutical companies have criticised the fund, saying the blanket amount they are asked to contribute is not appropriate, arguing that not all medicines are built using DSI, and that the fund overlaps with existing laws.

Since its official launch in February 2025, the fund has received just three contributions by small private-sector companies: $5,000 from the UK-based biotech firm Prozomix; $1,000 from TierraViva AI, also based in Britain; and $1,085 from the Belgian firm E-Biom.

“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, who said it was too optimistic to expect companies to contribute voluntarily and that they should be compelled to do so.

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.

A spokesperson for the Cali Fund said the amount raised so far was “disappointing but not entirely surprising”, adding that “comparable financial instruments have generally taken two to three years before contributions began to scale [up]”.

The Cali Fund will be discussed at Cop17 this month in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

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

A spokesperson for the French pharmaceutical multinational Sanofi said the company recognised “the critical importance of biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to human health and the long-term resilience of healthcare systems” and that protecting nature was a core component of its environmental sustainability strategy.

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”.

They 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.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Rebecca Ratcliffe, Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on the app for all the latest news and features