ICTSD and Partner News - Climate Technology and Trade

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ICTSD has recently launched an initiative aimed at filling some of the knowledge gaps that currently hamper progress in enhancing access to climate change mitigation technologies.

Technological solutions are imperative to meet the challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation. A critical factor in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, technology is also fundamental to enhancing existing abilities and lowering the costs of reducing these emissions.

Broad diffusion of current technologies and the development of new ones will be essential to achieve a transition to a low-carbon economy. In this context, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol require parties to promote and co-operate in the development and diffusion – including the transfer – of technologies that control, reduce or prevent GHG emissions. Recognition of the need for enhanced action on development and transfer of technology is a key pillar of the Bali Action Plan. Developing countries have also stressed that their capacity to undertake mitigation efforts depends greatly on the access they will have to clean technologies. Nevertheless, discussions on this complex issue have so far been rather divisive in the climate change talks (Bridges Year 12 No.3 page 20).

There is significant uncertainty as to the manner in which to provide effective incentives for the development and effective transfer of clean technologies. More fundamentally, there appears to be an incomplete understanding of the kinds of barriers that can, and should, be addressed at the global level through international regulatory frameworks such as those related to trade policy, intellectual property, investment and financing.

As a contribution to analytical thinking in the search for global solutions, ICTSD launched in June the Initiative on Climate Technology and Trade, an informal platform composed of prominent experts on the development and transfer of technology from across the world. Taking a resolutely multidisciplinary approach, the initiative seeks to complement and reinforce existing mechanisms, such as the UN Climate Convention’s Expert Group on Technology Transfer, by analytical perspectives on key technology-related stumbling blocks in the climate change negotiations. Its principal aims are to identify knowledge gaps in global regulatory frameworks relevant to the development and transfer of technology; to provide a conceptual framework for analysis; and to generate solutions-oriented proposals.

The initiative will address specific questions that have been recurrent in the negotiations on development and transfer of technology, including the following:
• What are the implications of intellectual property protection for access to climate-friendly technologies?
• How can an appropriate balance be achieved between the need for rapid diffusion of climate-friendly technologies and the protection of innovation and provision of incentives for it?
• How relevant are the flexibilities that exist within the intellectual property regime, including the potential use of compulsory licensing in the climate change context?
• What lessons could be derived for the climate regime from the experience accumulated on the phasing out of substances that deplete the ozone layer under the Montreal Protocol?
• How could proposals on patent pooling, public-private partnerships and other alternative models be effectively applied so as to promote innovation, development and transfer of climate technologies?
• What is the potential for trade and trade policies to enhance global diffusion of low carbon goods and technologies, and how could such potential be harnessed in the crafting of trade policies at the multilateral level?

Through research and analysis undertaken by a multidisciplinary group of experts, ICTSD expects to generate solutions-focused and policy-oriented proposals that can be fed into, and inform the work of, the bodies dealing with the development and transfer of technology within the UNFCCC process on the road to Copenhagen 2009.