Intellectual property rights and low carbon technology transfer: Conflicting discourses of diffusion and development

By D. Ockwell, Ruediger Haum, A. Mallett, Jim Watson. 2010

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the transfer of low carbon technologies to developing countries have been the focus of sustained disagreement between many developed and developing country Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We argue that this disagreement stems from two conflicting political discourses of economic development and low carbon technology diffusion which tend to underpin developing and developed countries’ respective motivations for becoming party to the Convention. We illustrate the policy implications of these discourses by examining empirical evidence on IPRs and low carbon technology transfer and highlight how the two discourses are based on an incomplete understanding of the role of technological capacity in either economic development or technology diffusion. This has important implication for the success of post-2012 international climate agreements.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a7c66d3ad7bc88f89df89f25a57e5c1e91aad97a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Tobias S. Schmidt
2. J. Huenteler
3. B. Michel
4. R. Hoekstra
5. Lucy Baker
6. Sangwon Suh
7. Benjamin Sovacool
8. C. Niebuhr

In Environmental Engineering

1. B. Michel
2. R. Hoekstra
3. Lucy Baker
4. J. Huenteler
5. Sangwon Suh
6. Benjamin Sovacool
7. Tobias S. Schmidt
8. Manfred Lenzen

Citations in the corpus

• Environmental Regulation and the Cross-Border Diffusion of New Technology: Evidence from Automobile Patents (2015, unknown): “The specificity of developed-developing country flows Much of the debate on cross-border technology flows and transfers has focused on the movement of ESTs from developed to developing countries (Ockwell et al., 2011; Gallagher, 2006; IPCC, 2007).”
• The emission cost of international sourcing: using structural decomposition analysis to calculate the contribution of international sourcing to CO2-emission growth (2016, background): “In this context, it would be crucial to resolve the remaining issues such as the safeguard of intellectual property rights around low-carbon technologies and ensuring mutual benefits for all parties involved (Ockwell et al., 2008; 2010; Popp, 2011).”
• The Effect of Local and Global Learning on the Cost of Renewable Energy in Developing Countries (2016, background): “This means that removing trade barriers and providing developing countries with intellectual property rights (IPR) and resources for technology imports is not sufficient to enable countries to catch up to the technological frontier (Bell and Pavitt, 1996; Ockwell et al., 2010).”
• Decarbonization and its discontents: a critical energy justice perspective on four low-carbon transitions (2019, background): “Although the roots of an energy justice approach are deep, and date back until at least the 1980s (Perez-Guerrero 1982; Weinberg 1985), more recent works have applied energy justice principles or concepts to the topic of low-carbon transitions.”