Who owns the scientific data needed to protect the planet?
Published on 15 September 2026 at 03:57 GMT
By Editorial Team SDG13
Environmental protection depends on information assembled across borders: satellite records of changing landscapes, weather observations, genetic sequences and maps of species. Yet permission to consult a dataset does not necessarily include permission to redistribute it, the capacity to analyse it or a guarantee that its archive will survive. The question of scientific data ownership reaches from research laboratories to the public agencies using evidence to prepare for environmental change.
Different systems already offer different answers. Weather services exchange observations through international agreements. Space programmes publish data under defined access rules. Biodiversity databases balance disclosure against risks to species. Genetic information raises a further question: how can research remain open while benefits from commercial use reach those associated with the underlying resources?
A public good with several gatekeepers
In its 2021 Recommendation on Open Science, UNESCO describes open science as a global public good that should benefit humanity as a whole. It calls for long-term, collectively funded infrastructure and recognises limits involving national security, privacy, intellectual property, Indigenous knowledge and threatened species.
That position does not establish a single worldwide owner of scientific information. Ownership of an instrument, custody of an archive, permission to reuse records and rights over a resulting product are separate questions. A company can sell an analysis built from freely available observations; a public institution can hold records that cannot all be released. The practical issue is which decisions each actor controls.
Satellite access and the commercial boundary
The European Union offers a concrete example through Copernicus. Article 53 of its 2021 Space Programme Regulation establishes free worldwide rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt and combine Copernicus data and information. The same provision preserves applicable third-party licensing conditions and security limitations.
The regulation also provides for accredited access to security-sensitive material. Environmental and security functions therefore coexist within a programme associated with openness. The relevant distinction is between a general access policy and the conditions applying to a particular dataset.
Commercial activity is not inherently excluded by an open baseline. Processing observations into specialised services can create a saleable product without making the original records exclusive. Conversely, a licence for third-party inputs can limit what a recipient may redistribute. For a public buyer, access to a finished map and access to the measurements behind it are materially different purchases.
That difference affects scrutiny. If an environmental assessment can be inspected only as a final image, another researcher has fewer opportunities to examine how the result was assembled. Questions about reuse conditions extend beyond price to whether an analysis can be checked, updated or repeated.
Climate records depend on exchange and continuity
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) distinguishes core data, which its policy says shall be exchanged, from recommended data, whose exchange it encourages. Detailed classifications are implemented through its technical regulations. Its unified policy encompasses weather, climate, water, oceans, atmospheric composition, the frozen parts of the Earth and space weather.
This reflects a physical constraint: weather systems cross national borders, and prediction depends on observations beyond any one country's territory. WMO describes routine international exchange as the basis of weather and climate services. The connection to SDG 13 (climate action) is practical: observations and model outputs inform adaptation and preparedness for climate-related hazards.
A usable record also depends on continuity. An archive is more than a collection of downloadable files: instruments produce observations, specialists check them, and documentation makes their origin and limitations intelligible. A new measurement cannot retrospectively observe a period when no observation was made. Decisions about maintenance therefore affect the evidence available to later researchers as well as today's users.
Genomic databases and sharing commercial benefits
Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, parties adopted Decision 16/2 in November 2024, setting out a multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism for digital sequence information on genetic resources and naming its global fund the Cali Fund. The decision recognises both open access and benefit-sharing.
It calls for users benefiting commercially from sequence information in relevant sectors to contribute according to their size. For entities exceeding the specified size thresholds, it gives indicative rates of 1 per cent of profits or 0.1 per cent of revenue. It invites national measures to incentivise contributions; it does not itself impose a universally enforceable corporate tax. Public database operators and public research and academic institutions are not expected to make monetary contributions.
The decision calls for funding to support biodiversity objectives and research capacity in developing countries and economies in transition, and to benefit Indigenous peoples and local communities. It distinguishes access to sequences from the distribution of commercial gains, while leaving further decisions on contribution rates, thresholds and allocation arrangements to a subsequent meeting.
When revealing a location can cause harm
Biodiversity maps illustrate why openness is not always equivalent to publishing maximum detail. Guidance published by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) addresses the risk that exact locations of rare or commercially valuable species can facilitate disturbance or exploitation.
Its guidance favours generalising sensitive locations in distributed copies, documenting the change and preserving the original record. More detailed access can be governed separately. Such decisions affect scientific use: a record located only within a broad grid cannot answer every question requiring an exact position.
The restriction itself consequently becomes part of the evidence. For a map user, interpretation depends on whether apparent precision reflects an observation or a disclosure rule. Conservation and reproducibility can intersect at the level of a single coordinate.
Who pays for information that remains open?
Free access removes a charge at the point of use; it does not remove the work of collection, storage and curation. UNESCO explicitly includes financial resources, staff, connectivity and long-term maintenance in its investment framework. It also calls for safeguards against dependence on a single commercial provider and inequitable extraction of profit from publicly funded science.
Across these systems, declaring information public does not settle how its infrastructure is financed or who can use it effectively. The unresolved choice is how far environmental data can function as a global public good while retaining workable rules for security, commercial participation, conservation and benefit-sharing. The answer turns on access rights, sustained funding and control over reuse as much as on the name of an owner.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
• UNESCO, Recommendation on Open Science. Supports the public-good framing, access exceptions and proposals for sustained infrastructure funding.
• European Union, Regulation 2021/696, Articles 52–53. Establishes Copernicus access rights and limitations involving security and third-party licences.
• World Meteorological Organization, Unified Data Policy Resolution. Explains core and recommended data, international exchange and implementation through technical regulations.
• Convention on Biological Diversity, Decision 16/2. Sets out the sequence-information benefit-sharing mechanism, indicative contributions and treatment of public research institutions.
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Current Best Practices for Generalizing Sensitive Species Occurrence Data. Explains location restrictions, documentation and preservation of original records.
