DSI & the Cali Fund - FAQ

Digital Sequence Information (DSI) refers to genetic data in digital form - the sequences of nucleotide bases (A, T, C, G) that encode the genetic blueprint of an organism, stored and transmitted as computer files.

When IsoGentiX sequences a plant specimen and assembles its genome, the resulting FASTA file is DSI. So are the transcriptomic datasets showing which genes are active in each tissue, and the metabolomic profiles characterising the plant's chemistry. The physical leaf is a biological sample; everything derived from it that exists as a digital record is DSI.

Once data is digital, it can be copied at zero cost, transmitted globally in seconds, and used by researchers anywhere - without any physical material crossing a border. This is why DSI requires a different regulatory approach from physical genetic resources.

The Cali Fund is the Global Benefit-Sharing Fund for Digital Sequence Information, established under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Its name derives from the city of Cali, Colombia, where the CBD's 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) was held in October-November 2024 and where the Fund's operational framework was agreed.

The Fund requires commercial entities that profit from products developed using DSI to contribute a share of their revenues or profits into a multilateral pool. That pool is then distributed to biodiversity-rich countries - primarily developing nations whose biological resources are the source of much of the world's genomic data - and to indigenous peoples and local communities.

The Cali Fund is the most significant development in international biodiversity governance since the Nagoya Protocol entered into force in 2014.

The Nagoya Protocol (2010) requires companies to obtain Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and negotiate Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) before accessing physical genetic resources from a signatory country. It works reasonably well for large, planned bioprospecting programmes that involve physically collecting specimens.

But Nagoya was designed in the pre-genomics era. Public databases like GenBank now contain millions of sequences from organisms collected worldwide - many before Nagoya existed, some in legal grey zones. A pharmaceutical AI platform can download those sequences, train a model, and develop a commercial drug product without ever collecting a physical specimen, obtaining any permit, or triggering Nagoya obligations.

The Cali Fund addresses this gap. It operates regardless of whether DSI was accessed through a formal bilateral agreement or downloaded from a public database. Every company deriving commercial value from DSI is expected to contribute - not just those with formal access agreements.

The indicative contribution parameters discussed at COP16 were 0.1% of annual revenues or 1% of profits from products developed using DSI - with companies paying whichever calculation produces the higher figure.

To put this in context: a pharmaceutical company generating $1 billion in annual revenues from a drug developed partly using genomic data would contribute approximately $1 million per year to the Fund. These rates are indicative starting points; the CBD Secretariat will finalise precise rates, sector definitions, and reporting mechanisms in subsequent implementation decisions.

Separately, at least 50% of all Cali Fund disbursements must flow to or through indigenous peoples and local communities - recognising that traditional knowledge often sits at the origin of discoveries that DSI makes commercially valuable.

Madagascar has exceptional biological endemism - over 83% of its approximately 12,000 vascular plant species are found nowhere else on Earth. After 88 million years of island isolation, Madagascar's flora evolved along entirely independent evolutionary trajectories, producing chemistry and genetic structures not found in any other flora.

This means that when global genomic databases contain sequences from Malagasy endemic species, those sequences represent a unique, irreplaceable contribution. No other country has that sequence. When commercial products are developed using those sequences - whether drugs, crop varieties, or AI biology models - Madagascar has the strongest possible claim to benefit-sharing, but historically received nothing because no mechanism existed.

The Cali Fund is the first mechanism through which Madagascar can systematically capture value from its biological wealth being used digitally. The scale of potential disbursements depends on Madagascar being able to document and assert its contributions - which is where IsoGentiX's sequencing programme plays a direct role.

Madagascar's operative domestic ABS instrument is Decree No. 2017-066 on access to biological genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. It designates the Direction G-n-rale de l'Environnement et des For-ts (DGEF), within the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), as the national competent authority for ABS.

Decree No. 2017-066 governs bilateral access: companies that collect physical specimens or directly associated data must negotiate PIC and MAT with DGEF/MEDD. The Cali Fund operates in parallel - it captures benefit-sharing from DSI use that may occur through public databases without a bilateral agreement ever being triggered.

For Madagascar to maximise its Cali Fund receipts, it needs both layers working together: sound bilateral MATs for direct access, and strong documentation of its biological resource contribution to the global DSI pool for multilateral attribution. IsoGentiX's platform contributes to both.

The canonical case is the Rose Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus). Collected in Madagascar in the 1950s, this endemic plant produced vincristine and vinblastine - two cancer drugs that have generated revenues estimated in the tens of billions of dollars globally across six decades of clinical use. Madagascar received nothing: no royalties, no technology transfer, no research funding. The collection predated any benefit-sharing framework.

This history is precisely why the international community developed the Nagoya Protocol, and why Madagascar ratified it in July 2014. The Nagoya Protocol ensures this cannot happen with new physical collections. The Cali Fund extends that principle to the digital dimension - ensuring that even sequences from public databases generate a return to their countries of origin.

Cali Fund disbursements are directed to national governments and to indigenous peoples and local communities. The allocation methodology - how much each country receives, and through which institutional channel - is being developed by the CBD Secretariat and GEF. At least 50% must flow to or through indigenous peoples and local communities.

For Madagascar specifically, national government receipts are expected to flow through MEDD as the national competent authority for ABS. Madagascar will need to establish or designate an institutional channel for receiving and managing Fund disbursements - either through DGEF's existing ABS clearing-house function or through a dedicated national benefit-sharing account.

IsoGentiX intends to work with MEDD to ensure that the institutional infrastructure for receiving Cali Fund disbursements is addressed in our Framework MoU - so that when Fund payments become operational, Madagascar has the governance structure in place to receive them efficiently.

Yes. IsoGentiX is a native DSI business: we generate genome sequences, transcriptomes, metabolomic profiles, and associated multi-omics data from Malagasy plant specimens, and we license these digital datasets to commercial partners. Every commercial transaction we make involves DSI within the scope of the Cali Fund framework.

This is not a compliance risk - it is a structural part of how we have designed our platform. Our GUID architecture, digital provenance layer, and MAT framework ensure that our commercial activity generates clear, auditable, attribution-ready records that support Madagascar's Cali Fund claims rather than obscuring them. We aim to be the most transparently provenance-documented source of plant genomic data available to commercial licensees.

The Cali Fund applies to commercial entities that develop products using DSI and generate revenues from those products. If you are a pharmaceutical company, agritech firm, or AI platform using IsoGentiX-licensed data as part of your commercial programme, you will fall within the Fund's scope for those product revenues once implementing requirements are codified.

IsoGentiX's GUID architecture and digital provenance layer make your compliance documentation significantly easier: every dataset you license carries clear provenance records, Malagasy origin attribution, and cryptographic integrity verification. We will work with licensees to ensure that data documentation meets evolving Cali Fund reporting standards as they are finalised by the CBD Secretariat. Specific guidance will be provided in licence agreements and updated as implementing regulations are published.

A Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) is a unique reference code assigned to each IsoGentiX specimen at the moment of collection - before any extraction, sequencing, or analysis. It is the permanent identifier that links every data layer produced from that specimen: genome assembly, transcriptomes, metabolite profiles, phenotypic measurements, soil chemistry, and cryopreserved material.

For DSI traceability, the GUID is the critical infrastructure. One of the Cali Fund's central implementation challenges is attribution - determining which country's biological resources contributed to which commercial product. Sequence data without reliable specimen-level identifiers cannot be traced to its origin. IsoGentiX's GUID architecture ensures that every sequence in our dataset has a direct, auditable link back to a specific specimen, a specific collection location in Madagascar, and a specific set of PIC/MAT authorisations. This makes attribution automatic rather than approximate.

A SHA-256 hash is a cryptographic fingerprint - a unique 64-character code computed from the contents of a file. Change a single nucleotide in a FASTA sequence file, and the hash changes entirely. IsoGentiX generates a SHA-256 hash for every data record at creation and registers it on our immutable digital audit trail. Any downstream copy of the data can be mathematically verified as authentic and unmodified by recomputing the hash and comparing it to the registered value. This prevents silent data manipulation and provides verifiable integrity for audit and compliance purposes.

Steganographic watermarks go further. Using nucleotide-level encoding techniques, IsoGentiX embeds invisible markers directly within FASTA sequence files - markers that survive standard bioinformatics processing, including assembly, alignment, and annotation. These markers are not visible to standard tools and do not affect data utility. Under forensic examination, they enable any sequence that originated from IsoGentiX data to be identified, even if it has been incorporated into a larger dataset or published without attribution. Together, these tools provide both integrity verification and origin tracing - the two properties required for verifiable DSI provenance.

IsoGentiX's benefit-sharing model operates at multiple levels, all specified in our agreements with MEDD and DGEF under Decree No. 2017-066.

Monetary benefits: A defined share of commercial licence revenues is returned to Madagascar's national ABS fund under MAT terms, at rates negotiated with and approved by MEDD. Direct payments to local communities in collection zones are linked to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) agreements.

Non-monetary benefits: The IsoGentiX Institute (IGI) laboratory in Antananarivo is permanently Malagasy-based - equipment, bioinformatics infrastructure, and training programmes remain in Madagascar regardless of our commercial outcomes. Malagasy scientists are named co-authors on publications arising from the dataset. Madagascar-based research institutions receive priority access licences to datasets generated from national biological resources.

Our aim is to demonstrate from the outset that ethical access and commercial success are structurally compatible - not a trade-off.

Several cases demonstrate that benefit-sharing can work when the legal framework, institutional capacity, and commercial willingness align.

Brazil (FNRB): Brazil's National Benefit-Sharing Fund collects mandatory contributions of 1% of net revenues from products commercialised using Brazilian genetic resources. Contributions from cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and food companies have funded conservation and indigenous community programmes. Brazil's model demonstrates that contribution obligations can be met with relatively low administrative friction.

India (Kani Tribe / Jeevani): The Kani tribe of Kerala shared traditional knowledge of a plant-based supplement; a benefit-sharing agreement directed 50% of licence fees and 2% of product royalties to a Kani tribal welfare fund. Even modest monetary flows funded healthcare and education in communities with no comparable income source.

Costa Rica (INBio-Merck): A 1991 agreement between Costa Rica's National Institute of Biodiversity and Merck & Co. demonstrated that formal bioprospecting contracts with major pharmaceutical companies are commercially feasible - and helped establish the principle globally.

South Africa (NEMBA/BABS): South Africa's Bioprospecting Trust Fund collects permit fees and royalty shares, channelling them to conservation and scientific training. It has supported ecosystem restoration and researcher development across South African biomes.

The jurisdictions that have captured the most value from benefit-sharing share three characteristics. First, a clear and stable legal basis for collection - legal uncertainty deters both legitimate commercial activity and long-term institutional investment. Second, simple, auditable contribution mechanisms that are low-friction for compliant companies - overly complex systems are gamed or ignored. Third, governance structures that direct meaningful shares to communities and ecosystems at the biological source - not only to central government accounts.

Madagascar's existing ABS framework under Decree No. 2017-066 provides a solid foundation. The key priorities are: establishing a designated institutional channel for Cali Fund receipts; building the documentation infrastructure (GUID-linked, IRCC-referenced data records) that strengthens Madagascar's attribution claims; and ensuring the Framework MoU with MEDD explicitly addresses DSI scope, so that IsoGentiX's commercial activity feeds into rather than bypasses Madagascar's benefit-sharing architecture.

An Internationally Recognised Certificate of Compliance (IRCC) is issued by a national ABS Clearing-House when a company has obtained valid PIC and MAT for access to genetic resources. IRCCs are registered on the CBD's global ABS Clearing-House platform and publicly searchable - providing internationally verifiable, legally recognised documentation of the basis for access.

For Cali Fund attribution, IRCC references embedded in dataset metadata provide a direct link between a specific digital data record and a specific access agreement with a specific country. When IsoGentiX embeds IRCC identifiers in our dataset metadata, we are creating a machine-readable attribution chain: dataset ? PIC/MAT agreement ? Madagascar. This is precisely the chain that the Cali Fund's attribution methodology needs to function - and it is infrastructure that most public database records currently lack entirely.

FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles define best practice for scientific data management. They are adopted by the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) and by major genomic repositories. FAIR compliance itself does not address provenance or benefit-sharing - it is primarily about data structure and accessibility.

IsoGentiX datasets are FAIR-compliant as a baseline, because it is the standard required for scientific credibility and for interoperability with clients' existing data pipelines. On top of FAIR compliance, we add provenance-specific extensions: GUID linkage, IRCC embedding, SHA-256 hashing, and steganographic watermarking. These are not part of the FAIR standard but are essential for DSI benefit-sharing traceability. We are working with the biodiversity informatics community to contribute our provenance architecture as a proposed extension to FAIR for ABS-relevant data.