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The Green Climate Fund as a patent pool for innovations

Nature Biotechnology volume 30, pages 916–917 (2012)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

During the coming years, the United Nations' Green Climate Fund (GCF; http://gcfund.net/) and the Technology Mechanism will become fully operational. The GCF is a financial mechanism established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries in coping with climate change. A key function of the UNFCCC's Technology Mechanism is to not only identify and facilitate the adoption of existing climate-friendly technologies but also aid the adaptation and deployment of new technologies to meet local needs and circumstances. The GCF is likely to become one of the most important funding sources for climate-change biotech projects targeted at the developing world. Additionally, by addressing barriers to technology transfer related to intellectual property rights (IPRs), the GCF and the Technology Mechanism can become core biotech institutions in the developing world by boosting research activities and knowledge sharing. On the basis of discussions that took place at two GCF workshops last year, I propose here the creation of a license system and/or patent pool that would overcome these IPR barriers and provide biotech companies with greater incentives to outlicense their technologies, thereby facilitating the implementation of novel climate-change mitigating approaches in the developing world where they are most needed.

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Acknowledgements

I thank D. Cahoy, Pennsylvania State University, and E. Derclaye, The University of Nottingham, for their input.

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  1. Department of Biotechnology, Section Biotechnology and Society, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Menno van der Veen

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  1. Menno van der Veen
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Correspondence to Menno van der Veen.

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van der Veen, M. The Green Climate Fund as a patent pool for innovations. Nat Biotechnol 30, 916–917 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2378

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