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Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC, facebook friends me?!

Chancellor Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), just friended me on facebook. Out of the big open blue. What good luck!

I wrote him this short message (long wall post):

“Dear Chancellor Pachauri,

…I very much felt the need to attend the COP15 to discuss my thoughts on establishing an Open Source Development Fund for “environmentally-sound technology (EST)” transfer and having the opportunity to bring this idea to your attention is a blessing. The current negotiating conflict under the UNFCCC between the US & EU, for stronger intellectual property regimes, and the G77+China, for compulsory licensing for EST transfer, could be ameliorated by an alternative EST diffusion and absorption strategy altogether. An integrated open sourced research and development, licensing and commercialization fund could provide this alternative. I outline this proposal in a working paper located here: http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Development

In a clamshell, the fund would consist of a revolving loan fund that would be maintained with equity or business mesocredit investments in community-based start-ups (similar to venture capital and the Grameen bank). Returns on top of the investment would then be used to provide research grants to the networked collaborative EST research and development community which would be required to freely license their technologies under an open source framework, which would improve diffusion. The open sourced licensing of hardware technologies (as opposed to the more commonly implemented software) creates an interesting environment for firm behavior which, in theory, shifts core firm competences such that competitive advantages are found in the localization of technologies. EST localization is often cited as a fundamental problem for EST transfer and a shift in the organizational environment could, in this case, improve EST absorption.

If you think that this idea has merit please put me in contact with one of your colleagues who co-authored one of the few special reports published by the IPCC, Methodological and Technological issues in Technology Transfer (2000). An introduction from you would surely help spread this idea!

Yours faithfully,
Liam Rattray
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Technology Policy and Assessment Center
School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology”

Open Source Development and Climate Change

Some of you who are following the UNFCCC climate negotiations may know that there is currently an impasse between “developed” (i.e. US & EU) and “developing” (i.e. China and India) over intellectual property rights and the transfer of technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. I put quotes around develop* because it begs the question of who is “developing” and what we’re “developing” towards.

I think that open source R&D, licensing and commercialization of what the UNFCCC calls “environmentally-sound technologies (EST)” can
provide an alternative to the proprietary intellectual property licensing vs. compulsory (state-mandated) licensing of EST for diffusion and absorption of these technologies in deprived communities in both developed and developing nations.

I released my working paper on Open Source Development and Climate
Change with a paper, “How Open Source Development Can Resolve the
North-South Intellectual Property Conflict in UNFCCC Negotiations: A Bipartisan Technology Transfer Pathway” yesterday and I would like to hear what people think about my arguments and proposals.

http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Development

In it I propose an Open Development Fund to be administered by the
UNFCCC to provide grants to networked collaborative research and
development immunities like the Factor E Farm in Missouri that create
“environmentally-sound technologies” that provide for greenhouse gas
mitigation and climate adaptation as part of an overall bipartisan
(Annex-I and G77+China) proposal for Open Source
Development. This fund would make equity investments or mesocredit
business loans in local businesses that commercialize the open sourced
technologies developed by communities affiliated with the fund. In
this respect the necessary economic and information linkage between
target communities and research communities would be fostered.

One way or another I want to build a p2p development fund, be it
either through an international governmental body, like the UNFCCC,
which could provide for an immediate flush of funds or through an
independent non-profit which would spend many years building up the
endowment it relies on to provide funding. This blog is the start.