Speaker
Description
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity establishes sovereign rights of nations over the biological diversity in their borders. From pathogens to palm trees, countries can regulate the terms of access and benefit-sharing for their genetic resources under the Nagoya Protocol. But what happens when scientists share the data on these same organisms in open access databases and infrastructures? Who should benefit from these data and how can benefits flow back to the original country of origin? Recent international policy decisions under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and on-going discussions under the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and UN Convention on the Law of the Seas will fundamentally change how biological data ownership is handled. The decisions will likely impact biological database management principles, shift data stewardship practices, and revise the ethical standards of the bioinformatics community into the next decade and beyond. Come learn more about policy decisions that will impact your understanding of data ownership, ethics, and science policy.
Dr. Amber Hartman Scholz is a microbiologist and Head of the Science Policy & Internationalization Department at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Braunschweig, Germany. She leads projects on access and benefit sharing, digital sequence information, pioneered the DSMZ’s Registered Collection status under the EU Nagoya Protocol Regulation 511/2014, and co-founded the DSI Scientific Network and German Nagoya Protocol Hub. She held previous science policy posts in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as Executive Director to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the National Cancer Institute as a Policy Advisor, and a Science Fellow to the California State Senate Environmental Quality Committee. She received her PhD in Biology from the Johns Hopkins University in 2009.
Recent publications:
New benefit-sharing principles for digital sequence information. Science. Policy Forum. November 2023. (Free download available here.)
‘It’s a thorny issue.’ Why a fight over DNA data imperils a global conservation pact. Science Insider, April 2022
Multilateral benefit-sharing from digital sequence information will support both science and biodiversity conservation, Nature Communications, February 2022.
Myth-busting the provider-user relationship for digital sequence information. GigaScience, December 2021.
DSI Open Letter from the DSI Scientific Network, March 2022.
Access and benefit-sharing by the European Virus Archive in response to COVID-19. The Lancet Microbe, Nov. 2021.
The international political process around Digital Sequence Information under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2018–2020 intersessional period. Plants, People, Planet, May 2021.
Finding Compromise On ABS & DSI in the CBD: Requirements & Policy Ideas From A Scientific Perspective, WiLDSI project white paper, October 2020.
Combined Study on Digital Sequence Information in Public and Private Databases and Traceability, prepared for the CBD Secretariat and the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on DSI, Jan. 2020.
