CHARGING AHEAD: A puppet show entertains delegates and exhibitors during the United Nations conference on climate change at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre in Durban last week. Picture: GCIS
BusinessDay: Conference is expected to make progress on finance and technology transfer, writes Sarah Wild, THE 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) is expected to make progress on two aspects, finance and technology transfer, United Nations (UN) Development Programme director of environmental finance Yannick Glemarec said earlier this year. While negotiations about the Green Climate Fund have made headlines because of negotiators confronting each other publicly, the technology transfer discussions are taking place behind closed doors. For SA, these are two key issues. The country pledged in 2009 to reduce its domestic greenhouse gas emissions trajectory 34% before 2020, and 42% by 2025 subject to "adequate financial and technological support". The reality is that climate funding and technology transfer are in similar positions, as neither talks are dealing with substance but rather focusing on "modalities" and structure. The Durban talks aim to set up mechanisms that will allow for climate funding and technology transfer, without saying where the funding will come from or what sort of technology will be transferred and how. "We’re nowhere near discussing technologies at this point," says Gabriel Blanco, chairman of the Technology Executive Committee .The committee was established at the COP-16 talks in Cancun, Mexico, and met for the first time earlier this year. It is the policy arm of the UN’s Technology Mechanism. At the moment talks are focusing on the mechanism’s relationship with the UN’s Climate Technology Centre (CTC), and whether it should "provide strategic guidance" to the CTC. This centre "shall facilitate a network of national, regional, sectoral and international technology networks, organisations and initiatives", according to the UN’s website. However, negotiators have not yet decided how these mechanisms will function together.Dr Blanco says participants hope the Durban talks will achieve two things regarding technology transfer. The first — which "should be a priority for the outcome of these negotiations" — is the establishment of a governance architecture for the Technology Mechanism. The second is setting up the CTC. This is more complicated than it seems, because there has to be a framework for evaluating proposals and then someone or somebody to evaluate them. Source: BusinessDay - COP-17: Technology the key to reducing global warming
