Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Grasping Climate Technology Transfer:A Brief Discussion on Indian Practice


Affiliations
1 Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal - 721 302, India
 

Technological solutions are imperative for curbing the menaces of climate change. Thus, development of technology and its transfer have become a crucial component in climate negotiations. Within this grandiose set up, intellectual property rights add a new dimension. It is the constant demand of ‘not so rich nations’ that IPRs should not become a hurdle for transfer and allocation of climate technology. Being the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India has been proactive in climate talks and now is ready move ahead with clean energy development. However, for India the obvious conundrum is about framing proper policies and legal rules that would enlarge technology transfer scenario. Simultaneously, poverty alleviation and sustainable development have been a long-standing challenge for India. An effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and climate change action plans would certainly strengthen India’s position in international arena in years to come.

Keywords

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), Kyoto Protocol, Climate Technology Centre & Network (CTCN), Climate Change, Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property Rights, Sustainable Development.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Leopold A, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, (Oxford University Press, USA), 1968, first published in 1949, p. 178.
  • Cleaner not necessarily mean greener – not at least when we realize that global space for living is shrinking.
  • Critics like Barry Commoner, Paul R Ehrlich & John Holdren while developing controversial I=PAT equation raised doubt about the influence of technology in solving environmental problems. Similarly, Paul Ekins also voiced different opinion about utility of technology inn ecological matters. Ekins Paul, Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability: The Prospects for Green Growth, (Routledge, UK), 1999.
  • In this paper, I assume (somewhat arbitrarily) that climate change demands technological solution in terms of its development and transfer. The lack of theoretical justification and mathematical uncertainty are the reasons and such debate far exceeds the scope of current discussion thread. Even though we mostly admit that technology can help in mitigating climate change, it is just a part of the overall solution. We are also required to change our consumption patterns. Improved efficiency of resource should not lead to blatant increase in consumption. Otherwise, as per the classic rebound effect, efficient technology will only take us to the age of oblivion.
  • For example, the Bali Action Plan is divided into five main categories: shared vision, mitigation, adaptation, technology and financing. The shared vision refers to a long-term vision for action on climate change, including a long-term goal for emission reductions. The AWG-LCA subsequently split the work streams into components under those five parts. For discussion refer, Now, up to and beyond 2012: The Bali Road Map, http://unfccc.int/key_steps/ bali_road_map/items/6072.php (accessed on 26 September 2017).
  • Nevertheless, general consensus in US is towards the support for strong climate action.
  • Speaking with reporters at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in May 2017, Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi underscored the need to act against climate change: “Playing with the well-being of future generations would be an immoral and criminal act”, https://www.nrdc.org/experts/india-leads-climate-actiontrumpwithdraws-paris (accessed on 26 September, 2017).
  • This depends on understanding based on quantification of where we are now and where do we want to be and when.
  • Basheer S, An IP policy with no innovation, The Hindu, 17 May 2016.
  • DG Gurry Welcomes India Workshop on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights; http://www.wipo.int/aboutwipo/ en/dgo/news/2017/news_0050.html (accessed on 17 August 2017).
  • Economic Survey 2016-17, Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs Economic Division, Government of India.
  • The expression ‘anthropocene’, coined first time by Eugene Stoermer and popularized by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, is good enough to reveal the risks – we live in an era that threatens our survival possibility.
  • IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, taken by the members of the IPCC at its 28th Session (09-10 April 2008, Budapest, Hungary), https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/ (accessed on 21 September 2017).
  • For example, climate change litigations to quench the anti-environmental industrial hunger have become common in many countries. But its use to combat climate change problem is unique in nature as it re-states the viability of an old common law doctrine in addressing today’s one of the difficult and defused environmental problems. Thus, how an old tried and tested legal structure will fit into quick problem-solving approach is seemingly uncertain. At the international level this becomes even more acute because of lack of forum and standing.
  • Guha R & Alier-Juan Martinez, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South, (Earthscan, UK), 1997, Reprinted in 2006, p. 21.
  • In sociology, post-materialism is the transformation of individual values from materialist, physical, and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression. The term was first coined by Ronald Inglehart in 1970.
  • Some of the landmark decisions of Indian judiciary include, Rural Litigation & Entitlement Kendra v State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1985 SC 359; Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation, AIR 1986 SC 180; Samatha v State of Andhra Pradesh, AIR 1997 SC 3297 etc.
  • Some of the cases where Green Tribunal in India already have addressed climate change are Court on its own Motion v State of Himachal Pradesh &Ors., Application No. 237 (THC)/2013; Gaurav Kumar Bansal vUnion of India &Ors., Original Application No. 498 of 2014; Ratandeep Rangari v State of Maharashtra &Ors., Application No.19/2014 (WZ); and Indian Council for Enviro-legal Action v MoEFCCand Ors, Original Application No. 170 OF 2014. But the most notable is Ridhima Pandey v Union of India, 2017, pending with NGT. This is India’s first climate change litigation drawing inspiration from Juliana v United States, 2017.
  • Srinivas K Ravi, Climate change, technology transfer and intellectual property rights, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, 2009, p. 2.
  • Adopted on 9 May 1992, entered into force on 21 March 1994.
  • The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty adopted on May 9, 1992 and opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992.
  • Article 10(c) of Kyoto Protocol provides: All parties…….. shall cooperate in the promotion of effective modalities for the development, application and diffusion of, and take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the transfer of, or access to, environmentally sound technologies, know-how, practices and processes pertinent to climate change, in particular to developing countries, including the formulation of policies and programmes for the effective transfer of environmentally sound technologies that are publicly owned or in the public domain and the creation of an enabling environment for the private sector, to promote and enhance the transfer of, and access to, environmentally sound technologies.
  • Countries created the PSP in 2007, when the Conference of the Parties (COP) requested the GEF to elaborate a strategic programme for scaling up the level of investment for technology transfer. This was undertaken with the aim of helping developing countries to address their needs for environmentally sound technologies. In 2008, the GEF Council approved a strategic programme on technology. COP 14 renamed this programme the Poznan strategic programme on technology transfer. In 2010, the GEF submitted to the COP a plan for the PSP’s long-term implementation. This plan contained five elements: support for climate technology centres and a climate technology network; piloting priority technology projects to foster innovation and investments; public-private partnership for technology transfer; TNAs; and GEF as a catalytic supporting institution for technology transfer. Poznan Strategic Program on Technology Transfer, Available at http://unfccc.int/ttclear/support/poznan-strategicprogramme. html (accessed on 23 September 2017).
  • In 2012, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”) called for identifying technology facilitation mechanism. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda, in its paragraph 123, decided to establish a technology facilitation mechanism. The mechanism will be launched at the United Nations summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda in order to support the sustainable development goals. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform; https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/ technology (accessed on 23 September 2017).
  • UNFCCC eHandbook, Available at http://bigpicture.unfccc.int/ (accessed on 20 September 2017).
  • On the one side, declining transportation costs, significant differences in factor prices, and slowing growth rates in developed countries drove an increasing number of firms to establish operations abroad. On the other side, many governments, seeing FDI as key to bringing the capital, technology, and know-how needed to move their economies from traditional activities to higher-end manufacturing and services, not only liberalized flows but actively competed for FDI with a variety of preferential incentives and policies. Alfaro Laura & Chauvin Jasmina, Foreign Direct Investment, Finance, and Economic Development, Chapter for Encyclopedia of International Economics and Global Trade, (2016), p. 2; Calvo, Leiderman G A L & Reinhart C M, Inflows of capital to developing countries in the 1990s, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10 (1996)123-139.
  • The model considers the problem of a firm that has developed a proprietary technology and is seeking to deploy this technology abroad with the help of a local entrepreneur. A variety of alternative arrangements, including an arm’s length technology transfer or directly owning and financing the entity that uses it, are considered. Antr`as Pol, Desai Mihir & Fritz C, Multinational firms, FDI flows, and imperfect capital markets, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, 124 (3) (2009), 1172.
  • For example, companies usually employ risk weighting to adjust the discount rate that they use for calculating costs and benefits associated with specific projects. Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer, http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/tectran/index.php?idp=1 5 (accessed on 20 September 2017).
  • The suppliers of technology may also become apprehensive about the risk of their technology being copied without any payment, resulting in an inability of the supplier to recover the costs sustained in research, development and commercialization. Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer, http://www.ipcc.ch/ ipccreports/sres/ tectran/index.php?idp=15 (accessed on 20 September 2017).
  • Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer, http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ sres/tectran/index. php?idp=15 (accessed on 20 September 2017).
  • Section 5 of TRIPS deals with patents and Section 7 deals with protection of undisclosed information.
  • As a patent has not been applied for and granted in that territory (as is often the case in developing and least developed countries), or the patent has expired. Taubman Antony & Watal Jayashree, The WTO TRIPS Agreement – A Practical Overview forClimate Change Policymakers, Documentation used in technical cooperation activities of the WTO’s Intellectual Property Division, (2010), p. 19 https:// www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/ta_docs_e/8_3_overvi ewclimatechange_e.pdf, (accessed on 26 September 2017).
  • Since 2001, more than 85 developing countries have undertaken TNAs to identify their technology needs for mitigation and adaptation. Since 2010, as part of their TNAs, developing countries have also developed technology action plans (TAPs), which are concrete action plans for the implementation of their prioritized technology needs. The GEF provides support for developing countries to undertake TNAs through its Poznan Strategic Program on Technology Transfer. UNFCCC eHandbook, Available at http:// bigpicture.unfccc.int/ (accessed on 20 September 2017).
  • As a UN institution and the implementation arm of the Technology Mechanism, the CTCN helps countries to realise their commitments under the Paris Agreement. In effect, the CTCN operates as an expediter in binding expertise from a network of over 230 technology institutions from several sectors around the world for usage in developing countries as per their requests. Apparently, the CTCN has received 160 requests for support from different countries to tackle climate change.
  • Frame Dave and Matthews H. Damon, Keeping Global Warming to 1.5 Degrees: Really Hard, but Not Impossible.
  • Jeffrey A. McNeely, Economics and Biological Diversity: Developing and Using Economic Incentives to Conserve Biological Resources (Gland: IUCN, 1988), p. 2.
  • The standard economic theory says that efficient resource allocation should have the effect of maximizing utility from consumption. If we accept the use of time discounting as a method of comparing the economic values of consumption in different time periods, then sustainability appears to mean nothing more than efficient resource allocation, a concept already well-established in economics. This theory is known as the time preference theory which is particularly important in microeconomics. With time preference comes time discounting. For the purposes negating the future risks involved, future costs and benefits are converted into present value in order to make them comparable with each other. This is known as time discounting. In other words, the discount rate is a rate used to convert future economic value into present economic value. For instance, if Rahim offers Ram to pay Rs. 105 a year from now, the present value is Rs. 100 if Ram would earn interest of Rs. 5 on a deposit of Rs. 100.
  • Eighteen participants representing 46 WTO members are engaged in negotiations seeking to eliminate tariffs on a number of important environment-related products. These include products that can help achieve environmental and climate protection goals, such as generating clean and renewable energy, improving energy and resource efficiency, controlling air pollution, managing waste, treating waste water, monitoring the quality of the environment, and combating noise pollution. https://www.wto.org/english/ tratop_e/envir_e/ega_e.htm (accessed on 26 September 2017).
  • Mazumder R, India’s role in green tech transfer talks, The Business Line, The Hindu, (accessed on 17 April 2017).
  • Pursuant to India’s ambitious policy, i.e. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), these developers were providing electricity to government and its various wings. This was tied up closely with National Solar Mission of the country.
  • https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds456 _e.htm (accessed on 4 April 2018).
  • Article XX: General Exceptions: Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any contracting party of measures: …… (b) necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health; …..(g) relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources if such measures are made effective in conjunction with restrictions on domestic production or consumption.
  • Article 4.2: Each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.
  • Patents and clean energy: bridging the gap between evidence and policy, Summary of the report prepared by UNEP, Full report is available at www.epo.org/clean-energy; http://blogs.ei.
  • columbia.edu/2016/10/19/protecting-intellectual-propertywhile -mitigating-climate-change-can-we-do-both/ (accessed on 26 September 2017).
  • For example, Japan, U.S., Germany, Korea, the U.K. and France.
  • Anadon Laura Diaz et al., Making Technological Innovation Work for Sustainable Development, Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Harvard Kennedy School, (December, 2015), RWP15-079, 16.
  • Indian 2017, Additional Director General, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, (2017).

Abstract Views: 160

PDF Views: 120




  • Grasping Climate Technology Transfer:A Brief Discussion on Indian Practice

Abstract Views: 160  |  PDF Views: 120

Authors

Arindam Basu
Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal - 721 302, India

Abstract


Technological solutions are imperative for curbing the menaces of climate change. Thus, development of technology and its transfer have become a crucial component in climate negotiations. Within this grandiose set up, intellectual property rights add a new dimension. It is the constant demand of ‘not so rich nations’ that IPRs should not become a hurdle for transfer and allocation of climate technology. Being the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India has been proactive in climate talks and now is ready move ahead with clean energy development. However, for India the obvious conundrum is about framing proper policies and legal rules that would enlarge technology transfer scenario. Simultaneously, poverty alleviation and sustainable development have been a long-standing challenge for India. An effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and climate change action plans would certainly strengthen India’s position in international arena in years to come.

Keywords


UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), Kyoto Protocol, Climate Technology Centre & Network (CTCN), Climate Change, Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property Rights, Sustainable Development.

References