Setting the Bar for Environmental Responsibility: Basecamp Research’s New ABS Certification in Costa Rica
By Phoebe Oldach, PhD, Head of Global Research at Basecamp Research
The biotechnology industry is at its core built on innovations from nature. Current accelerations in fields from genomics to synthetic biology are transforming the ways in which scientists can implement solutions from nature for everything from creating novel therapeutics to developing greener chemistries. CRISPR gene-editing systems — a bacterial immune system — are changing how we address genetic disease in humans, scientists have been able to utilise natural products from bacteria to drive new antibiotic discoveries, and everything from dyes to new materials are being created more sustainably via the discovery and utilization of novel proteins. All of these biotechnology innovations have been built upon only a fractional understanding of the solutions that exist in nature: less than 0.001% of the estimated trillion species that exist on Earth have been identified.
At Basecamp Research we are working to ensure that the full diversity resultant from Earth’s 4 billion years of evolution is available to contribute to biotechnology solutions. We are doing this by creating the world’s largest and most diverse protein database, sequencing environmental samples of all types from all across the globe.
While the biotechnology innovations enabled by a deeper and more representative understanding of life on earth offer incredible potential for improving human and ecological health, we must take care to ensure that the process of getting to these outcomes is equally positively in impact. Basecamp Research both ensures that our research isn’t harming the environments we’re sampling from, and that we’re giving back to the stakeholders who are granting us permission to study the biodiversity of their sites. As consumers and stakeholders around the world become increasingly aware of the importance of informed and equitable access and benefit sharing agreements for the utilisation of genetic resources (physical or digital), industry must proactively seek the best ways to attain and communicate their biodiversity permissions.
Basecamp Research is leading the charge in this ethical biodiscovery. For years we’ve been partnering with collaborators around the world following the guidelines of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol, which are international agreements that aim to ensure the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of the components of biological diversity, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of biodiversity-sourced genetic resources. In addition to paying back royalties to the genetic resource provider countries where we collect our samples and access novel sequences, we’re committed to building up the teams of local scientists who we work with, providing resources and training to scale up our partners’ bandwidth and technology for the kind of sampling and science needed to grow our database, as well as providing infrastructure and expertise to fuel our partners’ own research aims and applications.
This week marks an important moment for our efforts as we proudly announce our acceptance of the ABS Certification from The National Commission for Biodiversity (CONAGEBIO) in Costa Rica. This certification stands as a further testament of our commitment to environmental conservation and responsible business practices, especially with regards to genetic sequencing.
Dr Randall Loaiza Montoya, Director of CENIBiot (National Centre for Biotechnology Innovation), will be formally accepting the certificate on Basecamp Research’s behalf on April 18.
“I think biodiversity is going to be a key driver for tomorrow’s biotechnological innovations, as these are billions of years of evolution that we can draw insights and discoveries from,” Dr Montoya said. “However, the work that we’re doing must have sensitivity and respect for these natural resources and the nations they come from first — without that, we will be doing more harm than good.”
What does this certification actually mean? Let’s dive more into the significance of this achievement and what it represents.
What is the ABS Certificate? How is this different from the Nagoya Protocol?
ABS, short for Access and Benefit Sharing, is a crucial framework for best practices in securing legal access to environmental samples or genetic resources. ABS agreements hinge on the agreement of Prior Informed Consent (PICs) and Mutually Agreed Terms (MATs) with biodiversity guardians (commonly referred to as Providers) that outline the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of these resources back to the Providers.
There are multiple ways that users of genetic resources or digital sequencing information (DSI) can show their commitment to these practices. The Nagoya Protocol, for example, has introduced the Access and Benefit-Sharing Clearing-House (ABSCH) as a platform for supporting the regulations’ implementation. Internationally Recognized Certificates of Compliance (IRCC) documents were developed as a standardised form of evidence that genetic resources had been obtained in compliance with the Nagoya Protocol and that parties had agreed upon certain terms before accessing genetic resources with intentions to commercialise. While this has helped in creating a globally-standardised platform for validating ABS compliance, the system hasn’t achieved universal usage.
Two reasons for this are that the Nagoya Protocol hasn’t been universally accepted in all countries, and each country that has accepted enforces the Protocol in different ways. Additionally, this framework currently only applies to genetic resources (i.e. physical resources), creating a significant gap in communicating the access and use of digital sequencing information.
To streamline the way that users of genetic resources or digital sequencing information communicate their compliance, CONAGEBIO, the national authority in Costa Rica for implementing ABS legislation, has developed a formal certification process that enables independent compliance verification with benefit sharing commitments laid out in the prior informed consent (PIC) and mutually agreed terms (MAT). You can think of it like a “Stamp of Approval”, similar to the USDA organic seal or GFCO gluten-free certification.
2019 saw the first case of the CONAGEBIO-driven ABS certification being awarded — Lisanatura produced a cough syrup, BRONTOX™, from essential oils extracted from organic plants grown in Costa Rica.
What does this certification mean for Basecamp Research and the biotechnology field as a whole?
Successfully obtaining the CONAGEBIO ABS certification signifies a major milestone in our ethical biodiscovery journey, representing a four-way agreement between ourselves, our local research partner CENIBiot, local landowners, and CONAGEBIO. As we celebrate our ABS certification from CONAGEBIO Costa Rica, we reaffirm our commitment to environmental responsibility and ethical business practices. This milestone is a testament to our incredible partnership with CENIBiot and marks the beginning of a journey towards a more sustainable future marked by a bridging of biodiversity stakeholders and the biotechnology industry.
About the author
Phoebe Oldach, PhD leads the Global Research Team at Basecamp Research, and is committed to developing long-lasting and impactful global partnerships that are centred on biotechnology capacity-building and data generation. Phoebe is passionate about the ethical sourcing of data from remote, biodiverse environments and the ethical commercialisation of biodiversity data.
