2.2 Enabling environment and extra efforts to enhance technology transfer
Successful, sustainable technology transfer requires a multi-facetted enabling
environment. An enabling environment for technology transfer includes macroeconomic
conditions, the involvement of social organisations, national institutions for
technology innovation, human and institutional capacities for selecting and
managing technologies, the underpinnings of sustainable markets for environmentally
sound technologies, national legal institutions that reduce risk and protect
intellectual property rights, codes and standards, research and technology development,
and the means for addressing equity issues and respecting existing property
rights.
Governments can aid in establishing an environment which promotes markets by
considering what is the set of institutions which underlie markets and what
are appropriate public interventions to shape those institutions. They define
the property rights, contract enforcement mechanisms, and many of the rules
for transactions that are necessary for markets to work well. Policies that
build or facilitate markets can have a strong influence on the characteristics
of those markets - for example, the relative sales share of domestic vs. foreign
products, the segments of consumers participating in the market, the ability
of domestic producers to participate in the market, the technologies available,
and how regulations govern market behaviour.
Creating such an enabling environment is especially relevant for those ESTs
that are already in common use and that could be diffused through commercial
channels, but whose spread is hampered by risks such as those arising from distortive
incentives, deficiencies in legal systems and inadequate regulation.
Apart from close to market technologies, many technologies that can mitigate
emissions or contribute to adaptation to climate change still lie beyond the
commercial frontier. Improving the enabling environment will not be sufficient
to stimulate the transfer of such ESTs. Many ESTs are still in the early stages
of their development and have a comparatively short track record. Market actors
will not accept the extra risks or costs involved in utilising these ESTs. Governments
should therefore consider extra efforts to increase the demand of these ESTs
by stimulating their development, lowering their costs and reducing the associated
commercial risks. Such extra efforts may include increasing the means for such
non-market EST transfers and creating new and improving existing mechanisms
for technology transfer.
These extra efforts will be discussed integrated with the actions to improve
an enabling environment in the following sections. In order to improve the enabling
environment of the transfer of ESTs, both market and non-market transfers, governments
could consider a number of actions. These actions have been classified according
to actions for all governments, actions specific to governments of developed
countries and actions which are in general more relevant for governments of
developing countries.
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