The Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany sees open access to digital sequence information at risks

The Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany strongly cautions against expanding the scope of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol (NP) to include digital sequence information (DSI). Such an expansion would have far-reaching negative consequences, which could severely damage scientific research progress in the fields of environmental and life sciences and biodiversity, and would particularly threaten international research cooperation within these fields. Furthermore, current efforts to make science more open and transparent (e.g. the European Open Science Cloud Declaration) and initiatives to warrant open access to data from publicly funded research would be jeopardized.In principle, the Alliance supports the NP, which regulates access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of resulting benefits (Access and Benefit Sharing, ABS) as of October 2014. It is a central concern of the Alliance that its members respect good scientific practices (established by field-specific Codes of Conduct) when cooperating with partners in a national or international context.
However, in 2013, the Alliance did publish a joint statement during the EU legislative process pointing out the foreseeable difficulties of implementing the NP for non-commercial research. Indeed, experience now confirms that, as a result of implementation of the NP, international cooperation in biodiversity research, the analysis of human and animal pathogen-vectors, and the investigation of plant diseases, among others, have been significantly obstructed. The main issues have been severe delays, bureaucratic barriers, difficulties obtaining sampling permits from the respective authorities, and existing legal uncertainty. (photo: Janis Eitner)