An annual investment in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 billion for the next ten is necessary for developing nations to grow on a clean energy path and face the challenges of climate change, according to new projections from the United Nations.
Helping economies grow with clean energy and adapt to changes in crop patterns, droughts and shifting disease vectors will require an enormous effort. In addition, according to the report, assistance from the developed world with “a level of international support and solidarity rarely mustered outside a wartime setting” will be needed.
But getting developed and developing nations to agree upon what that support should look like is not a simple task. In a new RFF issue brief examining case studies of technology transfer to China, Takahiro Ueno, of Japan’s Central Research Institute of Electricity and Power Industry, says a philosophical divide between developed and developing economies often emerges on the issue of technology:
Developed countries typically argue that technology transfer occurs commercially and the role of national governments is to create business and regulatory environments that enable commercial activities. For them, intellectual property rights protection is the core of enabling environments for technology transfer.
On the other hand, developing countries emphasize the role of public assistance by developed countries. Even if they agree on the critical and central role of the private sector, they continually request large-scale public funding from developed countries. In addition, they believe that protection of intellectual property rights makes technologies less accessible and affordable and request special treatments such as compulsory licensing.
Building a consensus on an international technology plan will mean addressing three issues, according to World Resources Institutes’ Britt Childs Staley:
How an international agreement can incentivize innovation of next generation low-carbon technologies, and accelerate and scale up diffusion of existing technologies to developing countries.
Whether the structure of the international regime should include a new technology body or bodies and/or a new technology fund, or should build on existing mechanisms.
How to solve divisive intellectual property rights (IPR) issues.
Finding agreement on those issues won’t be easy, but according to Childs Staley it could be crucial to the successful negotiation of an international climate treaty:
Technology may be more important to the post-2012 international agreement than the agreement is to technology deployment. In practice, domestic-level policies and flows of private capital will be the primary driver of technology development and deployment in the years ahead.
However, given this issue’s central importance in the Bali Action Plan, the technology provisions agreed in Copenhagen will have a major bearing on the negotiations’ success. Designed correctly, they may also play an important complementary role in facilitating the adoption of clean technologies around the world.
