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Reported by : Tirthankar Mandal, Centad
The NGOs meeting held between 12-15th May, 2009 at Copenhagen was attended by the leading climate activists from around the world. The workshop was divided into working groups and the plenary sessions. the working groups were formed on the issues related to financial issues, technology transfer, adaptation measures, Non-Annex1 Mitigation targets, and on the cross cutting issues pertaining to the negotiations currently ongoing at the UNFCCC. The idea of the meeting is to clear the contentious issues existing within the NGO community and to come up with innovative ideas for furthering the climate action on the different areas mentioned above. As part of the technology transfer working group, a detailed discussion took place within the group represented by representatives of the NGOs from Brazil, China, Philippines, Netherlands, South Africa and India to name a few. Discussions were broadly based on the current mechanisms of technology transfer, the existing barriers, and the possible way outs from the barriers to the transfer of technology.
At the beginning the group discussed about the process of the current negotiations and the linkages of technology and its importance for a fair outcome of the future deal. Further to the issues of concern, the discussions were also related to the difficulties faced in the real transfer of technologies. The current IPR system has been a major barrier to the transfer of climate friendly technologies and it has been observed in the first day of the workshop that the paucity of current empirical evidence of the fact that IPR acts as a barrier to the issue of transfer of climate change. However, this does not undermine the theoretical underpinning of the subject. The group felt the need for the extension of the definition of the technology transfer per se. The importance of know-how transfer, skill, and information related to particular technologies are important for the accrual of true benefits of transfers of technology. Mere turn-key projects will not meet the sustainable technology transfer mechanism.
The group also focused on the need to contextualize the technology transfer within the paradigm of UFCCCC and extra-UNFCCC process. The main issue of contention was the MEF process and the technology transfer debate. It has been pointed out that the Major Economies Forum is a key player in the context of technology transfer, because they have the largest number of patents ownership in the climate technology. The following figure might be of interest to support the case (Figure-1).
Figure-1 Patent ownership in selected Climate Technologies
Source: WIPO, Statistics, 2008.
The group discussed about the different dynamics that are currently undergoing within the MEF especially with the countries like China, US and other developed countries within the Group. Further, the group stressed about the need for keeping track of the happenings within the various bilateral and multilateral understandings that are taking place with relation to technology transfer.
Regarding technology cooperation actions at the national and the international level, the group stressed on the need to utlise the existing mechanisms within the UNFCCC to facilitate the process. The vehicle of NAMA could be utilised for further accelerated action on technology transfer. The group also pointed out the need to build on regional, sub-regional, national and international action plans for the development of the technology and its diffusion and deployment. Furthermore, the group discussed about the need to streamline the existing NAMA mechanism with the proposed structure of things.
Finally, there were discussions related to the identification of technology as a public or a private good in the context of the building up of the prudent policy mechanisms. This is a significant development because the identification of technology as public and private will make all the difference in policymaking. In fact they will usher a new straits of policy regime depending on the basis of technology stratification.
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