The International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) Program is an effort that addresses the interdependent issues of drug discovery, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable economic growth. The Program is designed to guide natural products drug discovery in such a way that local communities and other source country organizations can derive direct benefits from their diverse biological resources. Benefit-sharing may provide clear incentives for preservation and sustainable use of that biodiversity. Funding for the program is provided by six components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Biological Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Foreign Agriculture Service of the USDA.