DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: In a global day of action for climate justice, thousands of protestors complained about the slow progress in international debates on climate change at the United Nations conference in Durban. One of the chants of the campaigners was “Climate justice … not climate apartheid”. Banners dubbed the Durban event a “circus” – a “conference of polluters”.

They could have been talking about the meeting’s record on intellectual property and clean technologies. It has been marked by divisions, deadlocks, and delays in Durban. The topic is a critical one for climate change, biodiversity protection, and the energy crisis.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992 encouraged governments to “promote and cooperate in the development, application and diffusion, including transfer, of technologies, practices and processes that control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases”.

Such clean technologies include forms of renewable energy such as solar power, wind turbines, geothermal energy, and marine power; innovations in energy efficiency; as well as climate-ready crops, biofuels, and carbon-friendly farming; and hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius, green buildings, and smart grids.

But developed countries have been fiercely jealous about guarding intellectual property rights in clean technologies. There have been complaints at Durban that the belligerent exercise of patent rights has created barriers to access clean technologies, especially among developing countries and least developed countries.

The Copenhagen Accord 2009 and the Cancún Agreements 2010 established a Technology Mechanism, consisting of a Technology Executive Committee and a network of Climate Innovation Centres. The creation of a web of Climate Innovation Centres is designed to facilitate collaboration between the private sector and the public sector on the development, transfer, and deployment of clean technologies.

However, the Copenhagen Accord 2009 and the Cancún Agreements 2010 failed to reach a consensus on dealing with intellectual property and climate change.

The discussions in Durban in 2011 have featured a similar level of acrimony and procrastination on the issue of intellectual property and climate change.