Discursive Contestation on Technological Innovation and the Institutional Design of the UNFCCC in the New Climate Change Regime

ABSTRACT

Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries’ achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Technological innovation
• UNFCCC
• Paris Agreement
• climate change
• discursive contestation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Chaewoon Oh is a Senior researcher at Green Technology Center in Korea. Her research focuses on international relations and international institutions & organisations in the field of global environmental politics, particularly in the issue area of climate change and international technology transfer.

ORCID

Chaewoon Oh http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1357-5519

Notes

1 The UNFCCC does not define the terms ‘developed countries’ and ‘developing countries’ (Bodansky 2009). Instead, it divides participating Parties into the two main groups of Annex I parties and non-Annex I parties. A total of 41 industrialised countries are listed as Annex I parties, the 24 of which that were OECD members in 1992 are also categorised as Annex II parties responsible for providing financial assistance and technology transfer to developing countries. Most of the non-Annex I parties are developing countries (UNFCCC 2006). It should be noted that the Annex I parties are not exactly equated with developed countries: article 4.2 of the UNFCCC stipulates that ‘the developed country Parties and other Parties included in Annex I commit themselves specifically as provided for in the following’ (UNFCCC 1992). Even the Paris Agreement does not define the terms ‘developed country’ and ‘developing country’ (Stavins and Stowe 2016). However, developing country parties are still generally those in need of support through technology development and transfer (PA 2015, article 10.6 and 10.6). Thus, this research takes the general division of developed and developing countries.

2 The four sub-themes are (i) innovative financing, (ii) international cooperation, (iii) endogenous development, and (iv) collaborative R&D.

3 The six founding members are the US and Australia, which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and the ratifying nations of Japan, China, India, and South Korea. No member states of the APP, except Japan, has nationally allotted emission reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol during the first commitment period (Oh and Matsuoka 2017).

4 Civic environmentalism is also dealt with, but its use is rather marginalised in this study.

5 Strictly speaking, new technologies are classified into sustaining and disruptive technologies. Sustaining technologies are those that ‘improve the performance of established products’ and sustain the existing value propositions of the market's mainstream customers and existing industry development path, while disruptive technologies are those that disrupt the existing value shared by customers and create a new industry (Christensen 1997, p. 11).

6 ‘R&D system was seen as the source of innovation’ (Freeman 1995, p. 9).

7 The GEF is one of two operating entities of the Financial Mechanism under the UNFCCC.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Green Technology Center Korea under Project research on green/climate technology-oriented international negotiation and policy response (R17131) and Project research on global technology policy analysis through technology negotiation and the Technology Mechanism under the UNFCCC (R18131).