Make shared rules so the whole world shares profits from common resources like the high seas, Antarctica, and pathogen data
Steps to make it happen
- The world decides that life in the high seas, life in Antarctica, and data about disease viruses are shared resources for everyone.
- People who use these resources write down what they used in one shared record.
- Companies that make money from medicines or products put part of their profit into a shared world fund.
- Countries that share virus data quickly get the new vaccines and medicines first.
- The fund pays for patrols of the seas and Antarctica and for building labs in poorer countries.
- Every year, a public report shows how much money comes in and how it is spent.
- Using shared resources and then sharing what you gain becomes the normal thing to do.
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The proposal in detail
This proposal covers places that belong to no country and resources shared across borders. Specifically, it has in mind the genes of living things in places like the deep high seas, living things collected in Antarctica, and samples of viruses and bacteria that cause infectious disease, along with their genetic sequence data. Instead of handling each of these separately by field, the core idea is to apply one principle to all of them: use is free, but the benefits are shared. People who use a resource or data register which ones they used in a common international record, so that the use can be traced later. If someone develops a medicine or product from the resource and makes a profit, they pay a set share of sales, or a fixed amount, into a common fund run by many participating countries. Giving back through other means, such as providing technology, joint research, or training researchers, is also allowed in place of money. In the area of infectious disease, the rules promise that countries that provide pathogen information will get a certain amount of the finished vaccines and treatments first, at prices they can afford. Basic research that is not for profit, such as at universities, is in principle exempt from the burden. There is also an exception for emergencies when an infectious disease is spreading: talks over how to divide the benefits must never delay the sharing of information, and the division is settled afterward. The fund is run not only by countries that use many resources, but also with representatives of developing countries, researchers, and citizens.
BenefitsA promise to share builds trust and speeds up information sharing
The biggest advantage is that those who hand over resources or information gain the peace of mind that giving will not leave them worse off. With infectious disease especially, if countries that share virus information early are promised vaccines, they have less reason to hide it or hold it back, and the whole world can respond faster. Also, because part of the profit from shared goods flows into the fund, steady money can go to activities that have lacked funding until now, such as patrols and surveys to protect the high seas and Antarctica, and building labs in developing countries. If countries without technology can join research and development, the people who make future discoveries will spread across the whole world. Moreover, by bringing the separate approaches for the seas, Antarctica, and infectious disease under one principle, it becomes easier to stop behavior that exploits gaps in the rules to take profit alone. It is also worth noting that when new kinds of shared goods appear in the future, the same principle can be applied to start the discussion, which reduces the effort and conflict of negotiating from scratch each time.
DrawbacksIt could burden research and development and end up slowing it
What opponents worry about most is that the paperwork of recording and paying would slow down the speed of research and development. Developing a new medicine or vaccine means a few successes resting on many failures, and if a share of the profit is demanded when one succeeds, fewer companies may take on the challenge at all. Genetic sequence data is copied and combined countless times, so tracing which data helped which product is technically hard, and the only result may be a growing administrative burden. Even with an emergency exception, the risk remains that the effort of negotiating and checking could slow actual sharing. There is also a chance that conflicts between countries over what share to pay and who should manage the fund could deepen, and that agreement itself would not move forward. Guaranteeing that the money collected is spent fairly is not easy either. And there is a deeper question: by treating shared goods as things that can be turned into money, the rules might strengthen the view of nature that should be protected as a source of profit, and so raise the pressure to exploit it.
Learn the background
Global shared goods such as the high seas, Antarctica, and pathogen information have long tended to be treated by the idea that since they belong to no one, whoever takes them first may use them. But the technologies for finding medicine ingredients in the genes of deep-sea creatures, or for making vaccines from the genetic information of viruses, are concentrated in a few countries and companies. As a result, the structure makes it easy for profits born from shared resources to gather only with those who hold the technology. With infectious disease in particular, the same experience has repeated: a country is the first to tell the world about a new virus, yet the vaccines made from that information hardly reach that country. This sense of unfairness makes countries hesitate to share information during the next outbreak, and in the end it puts the whole world at risk. Countries have discussed similar agreements on marine genetic resources and on sharing pathogens, field by field, but a common principle running through all of them is still weak. As the use of shared goods spreads quickly, the groundwork for how to share needs to be set in place.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes