Abstract
While international cooperation to facilitate the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries is an ongoing part of climate policy conversations, international collaborative R&D has received comparatively little attention. Collaborative R&D, however, could be a potentially important contributor to facilitating the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries. But the complexities of international collaborative R&D options and their distributional consequences have been given little attention to date. This paper develops a systematic approach to informing future empirical research and policy analysis on this topic. Building on insights from relevant literature and analysis of empirical data based on a sample of existing international climate technology R&D initiatives, three contributions are made. First, the paper analyses the coverage of existing collaborative R&D efforts in relation to climate technologies, highlighting some important concerns, such as a lack of coverage of lower-income countries or adaptation technologies. Second, it provides a starting point for further systematic research and policy thinking via the development of a taxonomic approach for analysing collaborative designs. Finally, it matches characteristics of R&D collaborations against developing countries’ climate technology needs to provide policymakers with guidance on how to Configure R&D collaborations to meet these needs.
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Notes
This is asserted in the “Bali Road Map”—the outcome of the 13th Convention of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC which aimed to provide a route to agree a post Kyoto climate deal.
Collaborative R&D is mentioned under Article 4 of the UNFCCC. It is also covered by Decision 1/CP.13 of the Bali Action Plan and is part of the UNFCCC’s TT Framework (Decision 4/CP.7).
At the request of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) the Expert Group on TT (EGTT) prepared a report on options to facilitate collaborative R&D relevant to technology development and transfer. The resulting report was adopted by the SBSTA at its COP16/CMP6 meeting in Cancun, December 2010.
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This article is part of a Special Issue on “Governance, policy, and enabling frameworks for the transfer and diffusion of low carbon and climate resilient technologies in developing countries” edited by Subash Dhar, Ulrich Hansen, James Haselip, Daniel Puig, and Sara Trærup.
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Ockwell, D., Sagar, A. & de Coninck, H. Collaborative research and development (R&D) for climate technology transfer and uptake in developing countries: towards a needs driven approach. Climatic Change 131, 401–415 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1123-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1123-2