DSI negotiations in Geneva

Digital Sequence Information (DSI) was on the agenda of Open-Ended Working Group 3 (OEWG-3), which took place in Geneva in March 2022. You can read the recommendation made by the OEWG-3 on DSI and the other meeting documents here.

There is still a lot of preparatory work that will take place over the coming months in preparation for the next Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP), including meetings by an Informal Co-Chairs’ Advisory Group made up of different stakeholders. People from the scientific community will be invited to participate in these meetings.

An additional, 4th OEWG meeting is being planned for June in Nairobi to continue the work on DSI and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

DSI in the media

That DSI is a major issue that could potentially make or break the negotiations at the next COP has also been reported in the mainstream media. The Guardian was in Geneva following the negotiations and speaking to negotiators from different regions as well as representatives from other stakeholder groups, including the research community and NGOs.

Shortly after the Geneva meetings, Science also published an interview with Dr. Amber Hartman Scholz from the Leibniz Institute-DSMZ, who is a co-founder of the DSI Scientific Network and has been following the DSI issue for a number of years.

Researchers propose a multilateral solution for DSI in Nature Communications

A number of researchers from around the world recently co-authored a paper published in Nature Communications in which they argue that benefits from the use of sequence data can be shared equitably without hampering research. They point out how important open access to sequence data is for the research community and argue for the need for multilateral solutions for DSI, proposing that access to DSI should be de-coupled from benefit-sharing.