Before a single microbe from Río Tinto or Antarctica reaches a lab bench, EXPLORA has to settle a question with nothing to do with biology: who is allowed to use it, and who should benefit if the research leads somewhere.
Before a single microbe from Río Tinto or Antarctica reaches a lab bench, EXPLORA has to settle a question with nothing to do with biology. Who is allowed to use that organism? And who should benefit if the research leads somewhere? For a project sampling two of the planet’s most extreme environments, access and benefit-sharing (ABS) is part of the work.
The project studies extremophiles, organisms that thrive where most life cannot survive. It works under ABS, a set of international and European rules. Mapping how those rules apply, and where they run out, is part of what the project examines.
Sharing the benefits, fairly
Access and benefit-sharing rests on a simple idea with a long history. Someone accesses a genetic resource, a microbe, a plant, an enzyme-producing organism, and studies its genetic or biochemical make-up. In return, the country or community that provided it should share in whatever benefits follow.
That principle became binding international law in 1992, with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was the first treaty to recognise that states hold sovereign rights over the genetic resources within their borders. Its 2010 companion, the Nagoya Protocol, turned the principle into a working system and took effect in 2014.
In practice, access usually rests on two agreements. Prior informed consent means the provider country agrees to the access. Mutually agreed terms mean both sides settle the conditions, including how they will share any benefits.
Those benefits are not only about money. The Nagoya Protocol lists monetary benefits, such as royalties or licence fees. It also lists non-monetary ones: shared research results, joint publications, training, technology transfer and collaboration. For a research project, the currency is often the second kind.
Doing the due diligence
The European Union is party to both the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol. It has written the Protocol’s compliance side into EU law: Regulation (EU) No 511/2014, the EU ABS Regulation.
The Regulation leaves access itself to the provider country. What it asks of EU users, meaning anyone conducting research and development on a genetic resource, is due diligence. In plain terms, that means three things. Users must seek information showing they accessed the resource legally. They must keep that information for twenty years after the work ends. And they must pass it on to anyone who uses the resource next. Where the paperwork is thin or the legality unclear, the user has to resolve it or stop.
EU users also file a short due diligence declaration at two moments in the research chain. The first is when they receive research funding involving a genetic resource. The second is at the final development stage of a product. Some Member States, Spain among them, add a third moment: the patent-application stage. None of this is a formality. Several European countries have tightened enforcement in recent months.
Two rulebooks for two sites
Here is where geography starts to write the law. The whole Nagoya system leans on one thing: a country’s sovereignty over its genetic resources. Take that away, and the system has nothing to hold on to. EXPLORA’s two sampling grounds sit on opposite sides of exactly that line. That is why the same act of collecting a microbe can lead to two very different sets of obligations.
Río Tinto: inside the Nagoya framework
Río Tinto, the acidic river in Huelva, is the straightforward case. Spain is an EU Member State and has been a party to the Nagoya Protocol since 2014. Access to Spanish genetic resources from wild species runs through national law: Law 42/2007 and Royal Decree 124/2017. Both call for an access authorisation and apply the consent-and-terms logic. A sample from Río Tinto sits squarely inside the Nagoya and EU framework.
Antarctica: outside the sovereignty system
Antarctica is the opposite case. Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty freezes territorial claims south of 60° South. No state exercises the kind of sovereignty the CBD takes for granted. With no provider country to grant consent, the Nagoya Protocol does not apply to the Antarctic Treaty area. What governs instead is the Antarctic Treaty System. That system includes the Treaty itself, its Protocol on Environmental Protection (the Madrid Protocol), and the convention protecting Antarctic marine living resources.
Its drafters never built that system around benefit-sharing. Its centre of gravity lies elsewhere: environmental protection, permits for activities, and, under Article III of the Treaty, the free exchange of scientific results. Biological prospecting has been on the agenda of Antarctic Treaty meetings since 2002. Resolutions in 2005 and 2013 acknowledged that it goes on, while noting there are no agreed rules for it, and no agreed definition either. The result is a recognised gap rather than a settled regime. A researcher working on an Antarctic microbe is not asking anyone’s consent. Instead, they operate under environmental permits and a strong expectation that they will share findings openly. That is a genuinely different starting point from the Spanish one.
A map still being drawn
The map is not finished, either. On 17 January 2026, the BBNJ Agreement, the “High Seas Treaty” covering Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, entered into force. For the first time, it sets up a way to share the benefits of marine genetic resources collected in the ocean beyond any country’s reach. Negotiators are still working out how its rules will sit alongside the Antarctic Treaty System.
Underneath all of it runs a quieter, harder question: digital sequence information, or DSI. This is the genetic data researchers draw from a physical sample. As more research works from sequences rather than organisms, a debate is growing. Should benefit-sharing follow the data too, and if so, how? It is the kind of question without a clean answer yet, which is exactly why it is worth watching.
For European biotechnology, none of this is abstract housekeeping. Getting ABS right lets a project source responsibly, earn the trust of partners, and publish and collaborate without trouble later. It also builds early research on solid ground. In practice, due diligence is less about forms than about keeping science open, credible and fair.
What it means for EXPLORA
Because its two sites fall under two different frameworks, EXPLORA treats understanding ABS as part of doing the science well, not as an afterthought. The project reviews the regulatory landscape for bioprospecting and biotechnology. It also looks closely at the specific challenges of working between the Nagoya and Antarctic contexts. This is early, exploratory work. EXPLORA is investigating how responsible access should work in these settings, not handing out compliance advice.
Join the conversation, 28 September
EXPLORA joins three sister Horizon Europe projects, NEXTMARINE, XTREAM and Xtremolife, for a joint webinar under the “Synergy at the Extreme” cluster: From sampling to sharing: legal rules for marine biodiversity. The session takes place on Monday 28 September 2026, from 10:00 to 13:00 CEST, online via Zoom.
The programme follows the whole chain a real project has to navigate. It covers ABS, the Global Biodiversity Framework, digital sequence information, the newly-in-force BBNJ Agreement, material transfer agreements, FAIR data governance, and the exploitation of results in sensitive international contexts. The focus is marine, but the underlying puzzle is the same one EXPLORA faces on an acidic river and an Antarctic shore.
Interested readers can find the full webinar details and how to join on the EXPLORA website.
