Cheap green tech stays elusive Rich Nations Refuse To Budge At Delhi, Copenhagen Climate Deal Hopes Dim TIMES NEWS NETWORK New Delhi: The divide bet

Rich Nations Refuse To Budge At Delhi, Copenhagen Climate Deal Hopes Dim

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: The divide between rich and developing countries on the prickly issue of intellectual property regimes for green technologies came to the fore on the concluding day of the high-level climate change technology conference in Delhi on Friday.

With a consensus eluding the conference attended by 58 countries, including the US, China, Japan and several key G77 partners, references to the contentious topic were left out of the ‘Delhi Declaration on Global Cooperation on Climate Technology’, released on Friday at the end of the meet.

India, China and other G77 countries have for years demanded that industrialised nations should ease the IPR regime or buy out technologies from private hands to give them to the developing countries. The rich countries, which hold much of the technologies, instead say ‘investment environment’ should be improved for the private sector to bring in green technologies.

While some progress has been made on other elements of what could possibly form a deal on technology diffusion at Copenhagen, IPR remains the most contentitious subject with little breakthrough evident even at the end of the Bangkok round of negotiations concluded in the second week of October.

At the conclusion, the chair, environment minister Jairam Ramesh, noted: “There will be a continued need for further consultation on the role of IPR. We have recognised that there are different views on the issue.” He pointed out that countries had to still discuss how to ensure that “IPRs do not become a barrier to the achievement of common global goals”.

The high-level meeting in Delhi was not part of a formal negotiating process which is undertaken only under the UN but a strong signal from the meet would have influenced the UN talks at Barcelona and Copenhagen later. But at the meeting, several industrialised country representatives argued that the IPR regimes should not be touched.

PM Manmohan Singh, while inaugurating the meet, had said, “Climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods. This implies that the IPR regime should balance rewards for innovators with the need to promote common good.”

‘Emission more serious than fundamentalism’
New Delhi: The very existence of Maldives is threatened by climate change. So for Mohammed Nasheed, its young president and now the poster boy for climate change advocacy, global warming is a “more serious threat to the international order than Islamic radicalism, piracy or sharing of resources”. Addressing a think-tank on ‘environment and conflict resolution’, Nasheed said India’s position on climate change was acceptable, but appealed that renewable energy be used to provide power to over 300 million people. “Why do you want to go to yesterday’s diesel when you can go for tomorrow’s renewable energy and new technology? The world is on the threshold of new technology and you will be in the forefront if you use them,” he said. Nasheed said climate change was a real threat. “If we believe in science, and two plus two is four, climate change is happening and it is great threat to the world,” he said. TNN

Maldives president Mohd Nasheed