Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer

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4.4.6 Participation and Climate-Relevant Technology Transfer: Current discussions

Participatory development is now widely recognised as a way of achieving technology transfer at all levels of development endeavour. This has grown from a perceived need to move from donor driven technology transfer to national needs driven approaches. However, such a shift in approach is hampered by a lack of international consensus on what actions any particular country should take; how the international community should share the task of providing the resources for such actions; and, the disconnection in some developing countries between domestic politics and their stance in international fora. There is also a second bottleneck: the gap that exists between international agreement and domestic consensus in developing countries that is meant to follow international agreement (Gupta, 1997). Various of the work tasks initiated by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) reflect the perceived need of developing country Parties to benefit from capacity building so they are better able to identify their needs for technology transfer (for example, FCCC/SBSTA/1998/INF2, INF.5). In some ways the Technology Cooperation Agreements of the IEA are an attempt to build collaborative working relationships through a participatory forum of all significant actors with a role in technology cooperation activities relevant to the application of ESTs in a particular country (OECD, 1998b).

It has been suggested that if the FCCC wants to generate broader support, it may need to assist the Governments of developing countries to widen the base of domestic consensus among national stakeholders, investigating and responding to their needs (Van Berkel et al., 1997). To help address the challenges, countries are encouraged to engage organised stakeholders representing different societal interests for the priority sectors into a capacity building process. Three "pillars" are proposed: creating an enabling environment for stakeholders' participation; implementing and evaluating mitigation and adaptation actions; and assessing mitigation and adaptation needs and opportunities. These all link to a roundtable process which engages stakeholders who represent different societal interests to produce and implement, in an organised way, a prioritised national action plan with wide buy-in (Van Berkel and Arkesteijn, 1998). then propose that assistance is required for the organisation and facilitation of the participatory process that will result in sound proposals for climate relevant technology transfer and collaboration.

Table 4.4 Interest Groups
Seller interest Interests of the person selling the technology
Buyer interest Interests of the purchaser of the technology
Third party supporter interest Interests of those parties supporting the sale-purchase of the technology
Third party victim interest Interests of those parties negatively affected by the sale-purchase of the technology
process-es, Payer interest Interests of those parties that have a role in financing the transaction

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