TierraViva AI is First Contributor to UN Cali Fund
At the 30th UN Climate Change COP in Belém, our CEO Paul Oldham announced that TierraViva is the first company to contribute to the UN Cali Fund under the Convention on Biological Diversity.
This initial contribution demonstrates TierraViva’s leadership and its commitment to the Fund’s core principle: that companies benefiting from the use of genetic data share a responsibility to support the conservation of biodiversity—and the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who safeguard it. By investing in nature and in the communities who protect it, TierraViva is helping to secure the foundations of future innovation and the health of our planet.
In this video, Paul explores why supporting the UN Cali Fund is a smart and responsible step for companies that rely on genetic data, and how it strengthens environmental stewardship.
This is a transcript of the speech as it was delivered at COP30 in Belem:
“Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to speak. My name is Paul Oldham, and I represent TierraViva AI.
TierraViva AI is a new start-up with headquarters in the UK and an office and team in Kenya. Yes, we have a Spanish name - Tierra Viva or Terra Viva in Portuguese — and I’ll come back to that at the end. Recently, TierraViva became the first company to contribute to the Cali Fund under the Biodiversity Convention.
I want to explain why we did this, and why more companies should contribute.
We use artificial intelligence to develop what we call biodiversity intelligence. Like many companies in biotechnology and related sectors, we use digital sequence information from public databases as part of our work.
As a small start-up, we don’t meet the contribution thresholds agreed at COP16 in Cali. But we decided to make an initial contribution of one thousand dollars and we are committed to contributing more as our business grows.
So, why did we do this?
The UK’s Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity made the point that nature is essential to the economy, but in conventional economic thinking is treated as an afterthought — something to worry about on Sunday afternoons. Thinking about this as a business, nature is like a forgotten employee — a long-serving worker lost in a basement somewhere who keeps everything running but has dropped off the payroll due to an oversight by human resources. Responsible businesses know this has to change.
Companies benefiting from digital sequence information — the fabric of life itself — have been invited to voluntarily contribute 0.1% of revenue or 1% of profit to the Cali Fund.
In the UK and elsewhere, employees receive annual increments. It’s time to give nature the same — the biodiversity increment. We have chosen to lead by example in making our contribution but it is also important to highlight business concerns.
Companies making contributions will want confidence that their money will fund real, practical action on the ground — not overhead, not fripperies, but practical action. That action will often be led by indigenous peoples and local communities who are the stewards of biodiversity. However, companies will also need guidance in overcoming uncertainty about how that could work in practice.
The good news is that the programme of work of the CBD Subsidiary Body on Traditional Knowledge provides a set of clear priorities for action agreed between governments and Indigenous Peoples and local communities. In addition, at the level of disbursements from the Cali Fund, UNDP has 30 years of experience with the Small Grants Programme which offers a proven mechanism for transparency and accountability.
The Cali Fund establishes that at least 50% of funding will go to indigenous peoples and local communities. Contributions by companies to the Cali Fund can therefore be seen as part of wider global progress in tackling chronic underfunding for the stewards of biodiversity. This progress is also represented by the renewal of the forest tenure pledge and the creation of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility at COP30.
Businesses also have a number of technical concerns, these include: legal certainty, obligation stacking, the need for a level playing field, and positive incentives to contribute. The Friends of the Cali Fund, led by the UK and Chile, is an important forum to address these concerns. As an AI company we spend a lot of our time writing code to solve complex software challenges. What software companies understand is that complex challenges cannot be solved all in one go: an iterative approach is needed. Addressing business concerns will therefore best be dealt with through a process of learning by doing and practical action.
I am confident that in the near future major firms from a number of sectors will make substantive contributions to the Cali Fund. As a small company we are proud to be an early contributor. Our contribution proves that companies of any size — small, medium or large — can contribute to the Cali Fund. In the UK there are around 1600 biotechnology companies listed as active with companies house. The vast majority are small companies. We hope that many more companies will join us in contributing to the Cali Fund and paying the biodiversity increment.
I’d like to end on a personal note with the origin of our company name - Tierra Viva. As a young university student in the UK, I was inspired by the example of Chico Mendes. That led me to spend the early part of my career living and working with Indigenous Peoples in Amazonia, supporting their efforts to defend their lands and environment. I am very proud that some of the people I lived and worked from the regional organisation of indigenous peoples of Amazonas - ORPIA - in Venezuela - are here at COP30 today. So, it means a great deal to me to be able to announce the TierraViva contribution at a COP held in Amazonia. I wish the Brazilian presidency every success in the days to come.
Thank-you”