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Technology transfer aimed at fostering mitigation and adaptation responses
to climate change will be most effective where it engages all key stakeholders
in designing and implementing technology transfer actions. These key stakeholders
include in-country and international private businesses and investors, government
agencies, and bilateral and multilateral donor organisations. While private
businesses play the key role in implementing most technology transfer activities,
national governments and international donor agencies can help remove market
barriers and set conditions to ensure effective private sector participation
in technology transfer. Technology transfer activities will be most effective
where businesses, governments, and donor organisations collaborate in designing
and implementing these activities to make the most productive use of their respective
resources and authorities.
Since climate change is not explicitly considered in most development plans,
climate change considerations are not fully integrated into the development
plans that shape markets for new technologies. In many cases, consideration
of climate change issues will only require marginal adjustment to development
plans, but this process of adjustment and review is critical in ensuring that
development programmes contribute to climate change goals. Therefore, it is
important for climate change technology transfer activities to respond to developing
country determination of what type of technology transfer will best contribute
to their development needs while also addressing climate change. Once these
technology transfer priorities are well understood, developing countries can
work with the private sector and the international donor community to facilitate
technology transfer activities to respond to these priorities.
Technology partnerships can also be exclusively at a firm (company) level. The
United Nations (1996, p.x) has suggested that "firms in many developing
countries--the least developed ones in particular--often do not have the funds,
trained human resources or infrastructure to pursue a technology-based innovation
process on their own. In such cases a level of cooperation is needed that is
qualitatively different from that associated with traditional technology transfer.
Technology partnership (TP) is one opportunity for participation by developing
countries' firms in the emerging forms of technological alliances and cooperation."
The essential characteristics of technology partnerships between enterprises
from industrial and developing countries are typically the following: (a) they
are long-term arrangements; (b) they are mutually beneficial; (c) they contain
an explicit commitment to cooperation; (d) they have as one of their central
goals the learning process of both partners; (e) they occur within a technology
system and within specific economic relations; (f) they enhance the level and
depth of both partners' technological capabilities (UN, 1996).
One recent example of a technology partnership programme is the Technology Cooperation
Agreement Pilot Project by the U.S. government (see Box
5.5). Another example is the Technology Partnership Initiative, run in the
United Kingdom by the Joint Environmental Markets Unit of the DTI and DETR.
Joint demonstration projects of many kinds represent another form of technology
partnership; one example is the project in Brazil by a consortium of twelve
companies, including private and public Brazilian enterprises and multinational
firms, to develop a biomass gasifier/gas turbine power plant designed to use
wood chips as fuel. The consortium was created by the joint entrepreurship of
foundations, industry associations, and government entities (Norberg-Bohm and
Hart, 1995). And the multilateral "Climate Technology Initiative"
has established a programme called "Technology Cooperation Implementation
Plans" (TCIP) to carry out a number of partnerships (UNFCCC, 1999).
| Box 5.5 Technology Cooperation Agreement Pilot Project (TCAPP) |
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In 1997, the U.S. Government launched the Technology Cooperation Agreement Pilot Project (TCAPP ) to provide a model for a collaborative approach to foster technology cooperation for climate change mitigation technologies. Under TCAPP, the Governments of Brazil, China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and the Philippines are currently working with the private sector and bilateral and international donor organisations to attract private investment in clean energy technologies in their countries. Many other donor initiatives have also adopted similar collaborative approaches between country officials, businesses, and donors in fostering private investment. However, TCAPP is one of the few initiatives that has engaged climate change officials in this collaborative process to lead to actions that address both development needs and climate change goals. TCAPP has two basic phases of activities. In the first phase, the participating countries have developed technology cooperation frameworks that define their climate change technology cooperation priorities and the actions necessary to attract private investment in these priorities. These actions include efforts aimed at capturing immediate investment opportunities (e.g., issuance of investment solicitations, investment financing, business matchmaking and capacity building, etc.) and longer-term efforts to remove market barriers. In the second phase, TCAPP assists the country teams in securing the private sector, in-country, and donor participation and support necessary to successfully implement these actions. This second phase of activities includes two major types of activities:
Sources: NREL, 1998, UNFCCC, 1999. |
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