CEE Jan-Mar 2012

There is also a talk of concluding a global deal by 2015," said Mr Anmol Jaggi, Director, Gensel Consult- ants, a carbon advisory firm. EU Woes Recent efforts by the UN panel to cu rtail supplies of carbon credits have not helped lift the market sentiments either. As Europe reels under financial crisis and with no industrial production, the demand for carbon credits remains poor, Mr Jaggi added. That the European economies are facing difficult times further makes it tougher to continue the Kyoto protocol unless other developed and developing countries agree to abide by mandatory emission reduction targets. Earlier many European companies have complained that their global competitiveness was hit by emission reduction targets, which only some developed countries had mandated - US, Australia did not even commit to the current Kyoto Protocol. However, Mr Pandey feels that the carbon market will continue to exist as the market mechanism has been created. The EU has already stated that it was ready to accept credits generated from CDM projects till end of 2012 in the third phase of EU Emission Trading System which starts from 2013 and goes till 2020. Moreover, the current set up of multilateral trading in carbon credits may go bilateral or the regional way. Japan, which is opposed to extension of Kyoto Protocol, has already expressed its willingness to source credit from India beyond 2012 on a bilateral basis. Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line, November 28, 2011, New Delhi WHAT DURBAN DID NOT DISCUSS IPRs are blocking access t o mit igation and adaptation technologies . India offers a way out- Debate on the rights and wrongs of intellectual property rights (IPRs) always gets stuck on a fundamental question. Wou ld there be any incentive to invent and create without the incentive of IPRs such as patents and copyright? The conventional view is that without the reward of IPRs there would be no investment in researching and developing new technology. The counterview is that IPRs create a barrier to access and actually stifle innovation. It is a deeply divisive issue that has been resonating across the world in the past 15 years in the context of medicines where access on account of their high prices is a pa ramount concern. Patents, say critics of IPRs, deprive poor countries of badly needed drugs. A simil ar discord is building up on the role of IPRs in climate change technologies. This would explain why negotiators at the vari ous conference of parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) have preferred to skirt the issue. In Durban, too, there was si lence on this subject. The silence is dismaying. The development and diffusion of clean technology is a critical component of the strategy to meet cl imate change challenges, a principle that is articulated in Article 4.5 of UNFCC. This requires developed countries to "take all practicable steps to promote , facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the transfer of, or access to environmentally sound. technologies and knowhow to other Parties, particularly developing country parties to enable them to implement the provisions of the Convention". In 2007, the Bali Action Plan, agreed to at the 13th CoP, restated the importance of tech transfer. That plan called for increased action on tech transfer to support action on mitigation and adaptation. In Cancun, there was some movement on the vexed question when CoP 16 decided to establish a Technology Mechanism. However, it left many important questions, such as how the mechanism relates to the financial mechanism to be resolved at Durban. So, too, the matter of how the two components of the mechanism. the technology executive committee and the Climate Technology Centre and Network. will relate to each other. Durban did not do so. It discussed how to operationalise the Green Climate Fund, some countries have pledged funds, and set up a new mechanism and adaptation committee that will coordinate efforts towards adaptation. Interestingly, India has submitted a proposal to foster a "constructive" discussion on what it terms the important issue of accelerated access to critical mitigation and adaptation technologies and related IPRs. It is the first country to have taken on this issue, and one can only 27