The Cali Fund, a landmark biodiversity initiative designed to raise $1bn (£750m) annually from companies that profit from nature's genetics, has received just $10,656 in commitments, of which only $7,085 has been deposited, according to figures released at the start of the Cop17 biodiversity summit in Armenia.
More than 18 months after its launch, the fund remains far below its target, with no major pharmaceutical companies contributing despite their reliance on genetic information from organisms worldwide for developing new medicines. The lack of support has led to accusations that big pharma is "free-riding on nature."
Industry Contributions Could Be Pivotal
A study by Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA) found that the top 15 pharmaceutical companies could have contributed $756m based on their performance last year, if they had followed the fund's suggested voluntary contribution of 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue. In 2025, these companies generated about $161bn in profits, according to ZCA's research.
June Rubis of Macquarie University, an Indigenous peoples and local communities representative from Asia who sits on the Cali Fund's steering committee, said: "Look at how much profit these pharmaceutical companies are getting – and we're only asking for a tiny percentage." Rubis added: "Definitely, they're free-riding" on nature, noting that businesses did not appear to recognise the importance of protecting nature or supporting "communities who have been in the frontlines of defending biodiversity conservation and therefore their future profits."
Funding Gap and Digital Sequencing
The Cali Fund is a key issue 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 fund will be directed towards areas identified as priorities by Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Victoria Kalyvas, who authored the Zero Carbon Analytics analysis, said: "The future of health is written in nature's DNA. The pharmaceutical industry stands to lose a great deal from its destruction, as do patients." According to ZCA, 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.
Industry Criticism and Response
Pharmaceutical companies have criticised the fund, arguing that the blanket contribution amount is not appropriate, as not all medicines are built using digital sequence information (DSI), and that the fund overlaps with existing laws. Since its official launch in February 2025, the fund has received just three contributions from small private-sector companies: $5,000 from UK-based Prozomix, $1,000 from TierraViva AI, also based in Britain, and $1,085 from Belgian firm E-Biom.
Brian O'Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said: "More money has been spent on meetings talking about the Cali Fund than there is in the Cali Fund's coffers," adding that 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." He added: "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."
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 spokesperson said: "Contributions will likely remain modest while the operational infrastructure is being completed and until the Cali Fund becomes better known," and that discussions at Cop17 would give companies greater information to enable them to come forward with commitments.
A spokesperson for 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 GSK said open access to DSI was "critical to enable continued medical innovation and rapid response to public health emergencies, including pandemics," adding: "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."
