Rebalancing South-South cooperation on climate technology: possibilities, challenges and gaps

Achieving ambitious climate action depends not only on access to climate technologies, but on developing countries’ ability to develop, adapt, manufacture and deploy them. This panel examines how South-South cooperation can help rebalance international arrangements on climate technology, addressing the possibilities, challenges and gaps developing countries face in building productive and technological capacity. The UNFCCC and the Belém Technology Implementation Programme (BTIP) provide the primary institutional anchor for the discussion, but the panel will also look beyond them to other forums of international governance — including trade, finance and industrial policy — where South-South technology cooperation could be advanced. The panel will also discuss what role Northern governments, institutions and funders can play in strengthening — rather than substituting for — South-South cooperation, and in supporting new paradigms of technological collaboration among developing countries. Bringing perspectives from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe, and from civil society and research institutions already implementing solutions, the panel will identify the political and institutional conditions needed for more equitable and autonomous technological cooperation among developing countries.

What does the panel want to answer?

• What possibilities, challenges and gaps shape South-South cooperation on climate technology, and how do these vary across sectors and technologies?
• Is the BTIP/UNFCCC —alongside other international forums (trade, finance, industrial policy) —positioned to deliver technology development and productive capacity for developing countries, or primarily technical assistance and access to imported technologies?
• Which South-South technology solutions and partnerships are already underway, and what would it take to scale and replicate them?
• What role can Global North countries and institutions play in strengthening South-South cooperation and enabling new paradigms of technological collaboration, without reproducing existing technology-transfer hierarchies?