The United Nations launched a new fund Tuesday intended to channel profits from pharma, artificial intelligence companies and others into nature conservation in developing countries — but companies have yet to pledge a single cent to it, POLITICO’s Louise Guillot reports. How so? The fund was born last year at a biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, as part of a global push to protect at least a third of the planet’s land and sea by the end of the decade, as well as channel $200 billion into nature conservation annually. Why it matters: Countries negotiating a pandemic treaty at the World Health Organization are discussing a somewhat similar mechanism, by which drug and device makers would have to compensate countries providing data and samples of pathogens causing outbreaks around the world. The issue has held back negotiations, and the lack of funding for this biodiversity fund might be a preview of similar hurdles in setting up the pathogen-sharing benefit mechanism in the pandemic agreement. By the numbers: Many in the private sector pushed back against the idea, arguing it would harm innovation. Companies making profits from using digitized genetic resources derived from biodiversity, like plants and natural organisms to develop drugs and therapies, have been asked to contribute either 1 percent of their profits, or 0.1 percent of revenue, to the fund. That can add up to tens of millions of dollars annually for large multinationals, but the fund’s voluntary nature means there’s no obligation to contribute. Countries agreed at the summit that at least half of the fund should be allocated to projects led by indigenous peoples and local communities. They also decided that firms involved in pharmaceuticals, biotech, cosmetics, animal and plant breeding, and AI should be the main contributors to the fund because they’re the main users of digital biodiversity data — known technically as digital sequence information. “Those who pay into the fund will go down in history as pioneers and will reap the benefits as the public increasingly recognizes the importance of giving back to nature,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, deputy executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, said at the fund’s launch Tuesday in Rome. | 
