This is a past event
AUCEL Energy Seminar Series Winter-Spring 2021
Abstract
International cooperation remains the preferred mode by which the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) or low-carbon emitting technologies from technology advanced and developed countries to technology dependent developing countries is being pursued in international environmental law. For instance, the international environmental legal frameworks such as UNFCCC, 1992 Biodiversity convention (Articles 16 - 21), 1998 Kyoto Protocol (Article 2(1)(a)(iv) and Articles 10(c) – 10(e)) and in the 2015 Paris Agreement (articles 10 -12), among others, have embedded provisions pertaining to transfer of environmentally friendly technologies and international cooperation permeates through all as the prescribed mode of transfer. Despite international cooperation has proven to be ineffectual mode for achieving transfer of low-carbon technologies between and among country parties to these conventions and protocols, there appear to be no alternative mode that is both acceptable and robust. Hypothetically, this research paper/presentation problematizes international cooperation from the observations that countries do not have requisite capacity to invent, transfer and absorb environmentally sound technologies but private cooperate entities such as Multinational Corporations, which wield the capacity inventive, innovative, absorptive and transfer capacities, are neither parties to international conventions and protocols nor are assigned any direct legal obligations to cooperate or comply with any enforcement mechanisms of environmental technology transfer provisions. The article asserts that MNCs wield both the environmentally degrading technologies and environmentally sound technologies and they also remain the main agents and source of high anthropogenic emissions as well as possess the needed technical and financial muscle to catalyse the accomplishment of technology transfer provisions in international environmental law and policy frameworks. However, MNCs, unlike countries, are profit-maximizing entities and therefore, are not charitable or altruistic with their technologies. On the contrary, they seek stringent legal protection for the intellectual property asserts and focus mainly on optimizing profits from their technologies to maximise pecuniary rewards for their shareholders rather seeking to cooperate with countries to mitigate climate change and environmental pollution. The article finds both the problem and solution in MNCs and therefore looks beyond international cooperation to strongly argue that the need for countries to actively involve the private sector in the negotiations, promulgation and enforcement of international environmental law is inevitable, if international transfer of environmentally sound technologies would ever have any chance of success.
- Speaker
- Hakeem Tahiru
- Hosted by
- Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law
- Venue
- MS Teams (link below)
- Contact
-
Daria Shapovalova (dshapovalova@abdn.ac.uk)
Join the event using this MS Teams link
