Technology Transfer to the Global South
It is a desperate need for the world today — no matter which part of the world — to fight against the common enemy threatening our survival and future: global warming. Stopping global warming is a common mission that citizens and governments of every single nation should collaborate on. Due to greenhouse gases emitted by human activities, global temperature has risen 1.01 degrees Celsius after 1880 (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Global warming has caused the sea level to rise, ice and snow to melt, and the ocean to become warmer. Global warming will render serious consequences in the foreseeable future if it continues. Many species of animals and plants will become extinct, human health will be threatened, and extreme weather will occur at a more frequent rate making our planet a less livable place (European Commission). Also importantly, many developing countries that rely highly on agriculture and other industries that depend on nature will be impacted the most (European Commission). Based on such predictions, this paper will argue that even though some people call for a climate reparation, it is much more practicable that the developed countries should cut subsidies to fossil fuel industries to establish a platform for technology transfer to many developing countries as a reasonable compensation and a fair process in the global effort to combat climate change.
The fact that the global north owes a tremendous debt to the global south in climate issues is irrefutable. Through centuries of exploitation of natural resources and labor in their colonies, the rich countries established their industrialized empires and financial systems that could dominate the world’s economy and further exploited their former colonies through covert, civilized, and lawful means. During the industrialization of the global north, a tremendous amount of greenhouse gases was emitted to the Earth’s atmosphere and caused disastrous impacts on the relatively fragile global south due to their relatively weaker economic status and dependence upon industries that could be easily destroyed by a flood or a drought. For example, the United States itself has produced 509 gigatons of carbon dioxide, which constitutes a fifth of the global cumulative carbon emission since 1850 (Wallace-Wells). The global south, however, was disproportionately affected by global warming due to its vulnerabilities. According to scholars, the financial reasons are the major factor that contributed to this vulnerability. The lower income and wealth in the global south are insufficient to combat some devastating damage caused by global warming while these regions are already “too hot” (Constant & Davin). To give some specific instances, the Caribbean was stroke by a recording-breaking 30 tropical storms in 2020. The strengths of these storms were too strong that the adaptation plans failed short. The three cyclones happened in 2020 in Fiji destroyed its sea walls, a measure they used to adapt to climate change. In Rwenzori, Uganda, sudden and big floods destroyed all their continuous effort on soil conservation (Khadka). It becomes more apparent that these countries are not financially and technologically capable for fighting increasingly intense climate disasters.
Over the last few decades, countries have started to get together and attempt to work out a global scheme to combat climate change. Even though the world is making progress in reducing greenhouse gases emissions, these efforts are still insufficient in their consideration of the inequality between the Global North and the Global South by ignoring the fact that developed countries owe tremendous debts to many developing countries. Paris Agreement and Glasgow Climate Pact, the two latest and most binding international climate agreements, were not very responsive to such needs. The most specific statement in these agreements regarding this matter was in Article 9 in the Paris Agreement: “Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention” (Paris Agreement). However, scholars have pointed out that hese documents, primarily drafted by the developed nations, were consciously trying to avoid using terms such as “liability,” “compensation,” and “reparation” (Sengupta). Certainly, the documents were not able to specify any support of such kinds to the developing nations either. The global north’s uncaring attitude was also shown in its failure to keep its historical promises. The financial commitment made by developed countries in 2009 to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing nations make transitions to greener economies was also relentlessly abandoned (Nevitt). Ironically, it was also recorded that the G20 countries have spent $3.3 trillion on subsidies for fossil fuel industries since the year of 2015. The one clear fact demonstrated by these documents and figures is that the global north is running away from its responsibility for the damage it has caused to the global south and its liability to provide any kind of compensation, and that needs to be changed.
To come up with an effective way to relieve such inequality, many people today are calling for a “climate reparation” to bring justice to this matter. Their primary idea is that the Global North should pay money to the Global South to compensate for their past and ongoing contributions to the climate crisis and the disproportionate damage it has caused to the Global South. The logic is very similar to the notion of reparation for African Americans in the United States. This initiative is reasonable and justifiable in its nature and is definitely the right thing to do. However, most of the people who proposed the idea did not go into details about how this reparation ought to take place. A more detailed plan called “corrective justice” seeks “negotiation between governments within an international jurisdiction” to establish an international compensation commission to have the global north countries pay reparations directly to the global south countries (Sheller). Nevertheless, even such a plausible plan lacks practicality in the world we are living in, at least in the short run.
The first major realistic barrier is the law. No matter how the reparation is planned to take place, collecting money to pay for it will always need to comply with laws in different nations. For example, there have been an increased number of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies on the ground that they are responsible for climate change. However, these lawsuits rarely succeeded (Burger & Wentz). Moreover, even though climate reparation could be made lawful in some countries, it might not be approved by the law in other countries, and that is when the issue of fairness arises. How could some countries pay for the reparation while other countries do not? This paradox will surely take an extremely long time to solve, especially in countries that practice case law — prior judicial decisions will be very hard to overturn.
Another realistic issue is the usage of money. To put it into two questions: to whom are we giving the money? How are we going to oversee how the money is used? For instance, Myanmar is one of the countries that have the highest global climate risk index (Eckstein et al.), meaning it is a primary victim of climate change. However, Myanmar’s democracy was overturned, and it is experiencing a military takeover. In such circumstances, should we hand the money to the military government? How are we going to ensure the money is used for its purpose? The questions can be applied to many countries in the global south with authoritarian regimes and corrupted governments. It will be extremely difficult to stop the reparations from ending up paying for dictators’ luxury lifestyles. Regulating institutions will do little to help as well since the action of dictators in their sovereign nations can rarely be interfered with by outside overseers. Therefore, ensuring the money goes to the right place would be another undeniable challenge to the climate reparation proposal.
The aforementioned barriers would prevent any effective attempts at climate reparation, at least in the short term. Therefore, it is necessary that we turn to more practical methods to make compensation to the global south. One of the ways that scholars had been discussing was the transfer of technologies. The current definition of technology transfer in the field of climate change is to take practicable steps to provide technologies that could help reduce greenhouse gases emissions and combat adverse effects caused by climate change in developing nations. These technologies could range from renewable energy such as solar power to drought-resistant crops. Transferring technologies to developing countries was not a novel idea. It was included in multiple international documents. For example, article 13 in the Paris Agreement stated that “Parties share a long-term vision on the importance of fully realizing technology development and transfer in order to improve resilience to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” (Paris Agreement). However, the potentiality of technology transfer was not fully developed due to its conflict with intellectual property rights (IPRS). The major paradox around IPRS is that it both serves as a primary incentive for companies to develop green technologies and a barrier that stops its diffusion to developing countries that need these technologies, which ended up putting large-scale transfer of technology into a stalemate (Abdel-Latif). However, if we could solve this paradox, there is a considerable potentiality for technology transfer to mitigate climate change and provide compensation to the global south.
The most effective way to solve the paradox would be subsidizing active technological diffusions to the global south. An international platform for technology transfer could be established, and all technology transfer processes on the platform could be subsidized. In other words, the governments of the global north will be paying for the great majority of the unavoidable costs for IPRS during the transfer of technology. This could be the only possible way to maintain companies’ motivations for green technology innovations while pushing these technologies to the global south, where their implications are in urgent need. Surely such practice will require a massive amount of money, and that money can come from reductions on current subsidies given to fossil fuel companies. Between 2015 and 2019, G20 countries spent $3.3 trillion subsidizing fossil fuel industries, and the U.S. increased its subsidies by 36.7% (Carrington). According to the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021 Report, these subsidies are worth more than twice as much as the total climate finance over the same period. Therefore, there certainly is enough amount of money to be put into the platform to pay for technology transfers. The benefits of decreasing the subsidies will also be twofold. By estimate, 36% of total global carbon emissions between 1980 and 2010 are direct results of these subsidies (Rentschler & Bazilian). Thus, by cutting the subsidies, the global north will also be taking a positive step towards stopping global warming as currently achieved agreements, even when perfectly carried out, are still “not enough” (Maizland).
There are, of course, limitations to the proposed approach. For instance, it will take great political courage and techniques to push the reform in fossil fuel subsidies without leading to mass unemployment, public opposition, and detrimental turbulence in oil prices. However, compared to the barriers that lie ahead of climate reparations, the limitations appear to be relatively minor and solvable. The practicality and efficiency of technology transfer make it much more promising. Therefore, instead of a climate reparation, a platform for technology transfer should be established, and it costs should be paid by cuts in fossil fuel subsidies in the global north.
References
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