Make eco-friendly technologies global public goods: PM

Climate-friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods and suitable mechanisms must be found to provide incentives for developing such technologies and for their deployment in developing countries, at affordable cost, prime minister Manmohan Singh told a conference on 'Climate Change: Technology Development and Transfer' in New Delhi today.

The President of Maldives, Mr. Mohamad Nasheed meeting the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi

"This implies that the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime applied to those goods should balance rewards for innovators with the need to promote the common good of humankind," he said. 

"Such an approach has been adopted successfully in the case of pharmaceutical technologies for the benefit of HIV/AIDS victims in developing countries. The moral case of a similar approach for protecting our planet and its life support system is equally compelling," he added.

He also proposed the setting up of an international network of Climate Innovation Centres (CICs), which could act as vehicles for enhancing technology innovation and capacity building in developing countries.

These centres could assess and identify locally-relevant key technologies and support their successful and faster development and deployment. The CICs in different countries may also cross-fertilise each other by sharing of "learning-by-doing" experience, he said. 

Addressing the inaugural session of the conference, the prime minister said developing countries face critical challenges in enhancing their capacity to adapt to climate change and that need some incentives for adoption of these technologies.