India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has attended the first United Nations Environment Assembly, held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 23-27 June 2014. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has described the UNEA is an “historic event for all of us, set to define not only the future of the United Nations Environment Programme, but to support further the institutional framework and programmatic platform for sustainable development and set the environmental agenda for the world to follow”.

At the first UNEA assembly, Javadekar made two points we find require critical discussion. The first is: “India strongly feels that technology transfer is the most important means of implementation and an effective and functional Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) is a must for a meaningful Post-2015 Development Agenda.”

We think such a blanket statement concerning ‘technology’ cannot be held up at international fora as being the consensus view of India’s citizens. There has for the last decade been scarcely any public consultation held at the local level – keeping in mind the rights of urban local bodies and panchayats in determining their development options and needs – concerning technology, its forms and the ways in which it may be used. Thus Javadekar’s statement is unrepresentative.

The Technology Facilitation Mechanism he referred to is considered – in UN and other inter-governmental fora – as being able to meet the technology transfer needs of developing countries in various sectors such as health, energy, food, water, sanitation. The view in such fora is that ‘developing’ countries need to be ‘assisted’ in technology needs assessment, adaptation, roll-out and human and institutional capacity building.

Javadekar’s second statement is: “I have a suggestion to make in this regard. It has been agreed to establish Green Climate Fund of US$ 100 billion per year by 2020. This amount should be utilised to purchase IPRs of most crucial technologies for public good and these technologies should then be freely available to the developing countries to facilitate sustainable development.”

We think this is an incomplete statement that rests on a few techno-centric views, which references intellectual property in a casual manner (and which also ignores the central aspects of the widespread opposition in India to genetically modified organisms for example), and which has overlooked entirely traditional and indigenous knowledge. The latter part of this second statement, “should then be freely available”, is useful from a South-South perspective and should be treated as such.