UK and India Proves That Not All Of Copenhagen Was All Talk And No Action

Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by Ross in Asia, Government Policy, United Kingdom

Copenhagen was full of hot air, right? Commitments by developed and developing nations fell short of the mark then and have since been further scaled back, correct? There’s no hope for further progress on the international response to climate change, is there?

Some countries have other ideas.

The Copenhagen agreement was a complicated beast, and although most of the headlines and disagreements revolved around carbon emission reduction targets, there were a range of other areas of discussion which were approached at the talks, including deforestation, technology transfer, bunker emissions, adaptation, financing and enforcement. Whilst the wording of the final agreement text had been stripped of almost any meaningful content at all by the last-minute pact between the USA, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, plenty of common ground had emerged between nations which has continued to be grown upon since despite the absence of a binding treaty.

One of the key relationships which emerged from the talks was that of the UK and India on the matter of climate change technology transfer. Connections had grown between the two nations with the proposal of Climate Innovation Centres for Technology Transfer, and the concept garnered widespread appreciation at Copenhagen.

Instead of taking an adversarial approach to technology transfer, both countries see greater collaboration as being beneficial to the economies of both countries. This is in stark contrast to China and the USA: the latter country has always being very protectionist regarding the competitive advantage represented by its advanced technologies, whilst the former country’s reputation with regards to IP protection has always been somewhat shady.

The latest fruit to be born from the new-found symbiosis on technology transfer is a joint research programme for cost-effective and efficient solar cells. The project aims to help the UK meet its 2020 carbon reduction commitments, and for India to deploy it’s planned 20 million solar lighting systems to habitations without access to the national grid.

Image of a solar panel by C-Ali @ Flickr