Who Owns the Ocean’s Genes? Tension on the High Seas

After nearly two weeks of negotiations in New York City, countries from around the world failed to finalize an ambitious treaty that would create huge marine protected areas and enforce stricter rules for industry on the high seas. The issue of how to share profits from commercializing the high seas' genetic resources has been a thorn in the side of international ocean talks for many years.

Halaven, a blockbuster cancer drug derived from a Japanese sea sponge that has annual sales of more than $300 million, is one of the many successful drugs that can be found in the ocean. Digital data from the genomes of organisms could be used to develop new products that could be worth billions. Who gets to profit from the use of these resources is a question that needs to be answered. The details of where U.N. negotiators got stuck on those questions give a good idea of whether there is any hope of protecting and managing the high seas.

Nations have the right to make money from fishing in international waters. They have to share the profits from minerals taken from the international sea floor. There isn't a binding agreement on sharing marine genetic resources. A proposed high seas treaty was being worked on by 168 nations at the U.N. 30 by 30 is an initiative to protect 30 percent of the Earth's oceans by the year 2030. Many scientists say this target is necessary to maintain a healthy ocean, stem the loss of marine biodiversity and prevent a further collapse of fishing worldwide. A lot of countries have committed to 30 by 30 but without a high seas treaty the math doesn't work

Almost 34,000 marine compounds have been discovered since the 1950's. The texture of ice cream has been improved by the use of a cold-water fish's anti-freeze and a microbe along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is being used to develop a biofuel. More than a dozen drugs have been developed from marine organisms. The first approved treatment for HIV, azidothymidine, is also included. Scientists in countries with advanced research programs are looking to the unexplored genomes of high-seas organisms for new leads.

The Nagoya Protocol is part of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The use of genetic resources is regulated by the protocol. While mandating that the rightful owners of the resources be compensated, it allows the commercialization of the resources. South Africa's rooibos tea industry paid an annual levy of 1.5 percent of the price of the raw product into a trust for local communities as a result of the Nagoya protocol. In July, the industry paid over a million dollars.

There isn't a law for the high seas. It has been difficult to agree on one due to the fact that marine genetic resources in international waters are not owned by anyone. In the past, the U.N., the European Union, the U.S. and Japan have argued for the right to patent and profit from marine genetic resources.

Developing nations, including a group of African countries, argue that benefits from marine genetic resources should be shared among all nations. A senior high-seas policy adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that this is a grand venture that developing countries have felt left out of. They want to be respected, they want to participate in the research, and they want to make money.

During the second week of negotiations, developed countries agreed in principle for the first time in 20 years of talks to share monetary benefits from the commercialization of marine genetic resources. Jaspars is an independent adviser to the negotiations and he says that this was a big compromise.

Negotiating teams rejected several money sharing systems. A percentage of the sales value derived from marine genetic resources would be paid by companies into a fund. The money would be used to train scientists, transfer technologies and achieve other goals. It required a "track and trace" system to monitor how their industries access and profit from ocean genomes, which developed nations saw as too burdensome. One criticism of the Nagoya Protocol is that it is too heavy-handed, and that it has hampered foreign scientists from doing basic research in certain countries. The law for the high seas is not something that the negotiators are comfortable with.

The U.N. member nations would have to make up-front payments. Governments would contribute based on the size of the industry in their country. Henry Novion, who was part of the Brazilian delegation, said that the initial figures proposed in New York were grossly insufficient. A pot of roughly $100 million annually, accrued from national contributions, would be a reasonable offer. A one-off fund of $500 million was proposed by the IUCN to kick start high-seas ocean protection.

Complicating matters is the fact that genetic resources include not only physical specimen but also data from the genes. The data can be downloaded and used to develop a new product. The DSI is all a company needs to create and mass-produce a product. kahalalide F, a compound that was isolated from a sea slug and is being tested against cancer and rheumatism, is created from DSI. All Medimetriks needed was the sequence data from the Spanish company. From collecting a zebra fish to collecting a tiny sample of a starfish, the focus has changed over time. Robert Blasiak is an ocean governance researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center.

DSI's approach to developing products requires no harvesting of ocean animals, plants or organisms, and its commercial potential is virtually unlimited because a gene sequence can be sold online multiple times. The most valuable source for commercializing marine genetic resources is DSI.

DSI is not addressed within the Nagoya Protocol. It is virtually impossible to trace the origin of DSI once it has been synthesised into a compound that is incorporated into a product, which is why the U.N. member states don't want DSI included in any monetary sharing plan for the high seas. When a product is designed using genes from different organisms, it's difficult to track it.

Researchers at the German chemical conglomerate were able to decode the genetic sequence responsible for producing Omega 3 in a marine microbe, and they were able to convert it into a rapeseed plant that could be used for human consumption.

The Nagoya Protocol doesn't include DSI, but four nations do regulate it. Companies that report the use of genetic resources with an ethical biotrading certification are rewarded. Companies pay a percentage of their revenue into a fund.

It's possible that a similar system could work for the high seas. It doesn't matter if you got a sample from a botanical garden in England or if you downloaded it from a server. The same thing is happening.