Company Name : Generic Source : The Times Of India

CANCUN: Amidst the grim mood at Cancun, there is one good news, or at least partial good news: the over-arching architecture of a global green technology sharing and development mechanism has been finalized. 

 

India played a crucial role in hammering out the deal on the technology framework though it could all get held up if negotiators are unable to come to similar level of consensus on other key issues forming part of a global long-term deal, namely mitigation targets, international scrutiny protocols, financing climate change action, forestry and the future of Kyoto Protocol. Regardless, this is one partial victory environment minister Jairam Ramesh would be able to go back home. 

 

The technology sharing and development mechanism will have a Technology Executive Committee on top with a climate technology centre under it. The climate technology centre will guide and manage several regional technological centres or hubs all over the world which will help find and develop innovations and technologies that would reduce emissions. 

 

The structure comes as a compromise made by the developing countries with US and other rich countries. The developing countries had initially demanded that existing technologies be transferred to the poor and that new green technologies be produced with funds from the rich countries and be put in the public domain and concerns about IPR costs be resolved. They asked for the architecture of a technology deal be made accordingly. 

 

The US instead proposed a hub-and-spoke model where the technology centre would facilitate networking and the nodes facilitate preparation of projects on technological innovations. The US and EU were dead set against any concerns about IPR being raised at all. In the compromise reached, the areas of dispute such as relation between TEC and CTCs and control over these has remained unresolved and will be figured out over 2011. Agreeing to just this wire-frame for technology sharing has taken three years and India has always been a leading player in talks.