IP And Climate Change Negotiations From Bali to Copenhagen, Via Poznan

Tracking the global response to the challenge of climate change requires a virtual world tour. It begins in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992, with the conclusion of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC or the 'Framework Convention'). This Convention still provides the overarching objectives and the institutional basis for international efforts dealing with climate change.

The climate change conference held in Kyoto in 1997 saw the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005 and provides for commitments until 2012. The international community is now working towards a global agreement that would succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The current round of negotiations began with a conference in Bali, in December 2007, which adopted a comprehensive set of decisions, set out in the Bali Road Map. This included the Bali Plan of Action, an ambitious program of multilateral work to tackle the challenges of climate change. It triggered an intensive series of negotiations leading up to the conference to take place in Copenhagen in December this year.

December 2008 marked the midway point in the journey from Bali to Copenhagen, with the convening of the Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, which reviewed progress to date.

Increased focus on technology and IP

The Poznan meeting saw increasing attention paid to the role of technology, and debate over the potential role and impact of the intellectual property (IP) system in promoting the development of new technologies, and in leveraging access to technology. Technology is the principal source of the climate change caused by human activity - anthropogenic climate change, as the jargon puts it - ranging from the coal-fired industries of the industrial revolution to today's overwhelming dependence on hydro- carbon fuels for travel. Equally, however, the international community now looks to technology as a vital source of potential solutions to climate change - both technologies that could mitigate, or reduce, emissions of greenhouse gases, and those that would enable communities to adapt to the altered environment wrought by climate change. While not offering a stand-alone solution, the availability of new technologies clearly will be key to an effective global response to climate change. An international understanding on development and transfer of technology is likely to...