Embrace green tech revolution or risk falling behind, new UN report warns

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“We’re on the starting of a technological revolution based mostly on inexperienced applied sciences,” UNCTAD Secretary-Common Rebeca Grynspan stated. “This new wave of technological change could have a formidable affect on the worldwide economic system.”

The 17 frontier applied sciences coated in UNCTAD’s Technology and Innovation Report 2023 have the potential to create market revenues of greater than $9.5 trillion by 2030, about 3 times the dimensions of India’s economic system right now.

Coherent motion

Used to supply items and companies with smaller carbon footprints, the brand new wave of inexperienced applied sciences spans synthetic intelligence to electrical autos.

The report requires coherent coverage motion to allow growing nations to revenue from inexperienced tech or danger going through rising financial inequalities, as developed nations reap a lot of the advantages.

“Growing nations should seize extra of the worth being created on this technological revolution to develop their economies,” Ms. Grynspan stated. “Lacking this technological wave due to inadequate coverage consideration or lack of focused funding in constructing capacities would have long-lasting unfavorable implications.”

Early adopters advance quicker

Whereas inexperienced tech exports from growing nations rose to $75 billion from $57 billion between 2018 and 2021, their share of the worldwide market fell to 33 per cent from 48 per cent. Throughout the identical interval, inexperienced exports from developed nations jumped to $156 billion from $60 billion.

UNCTAD’s evaluation reveals that growing nations should act rapidly and transfer to a improvement trajectory resulting in extra diversified, productive, and aggressive economies. Earlier technological revolutions have proven that early adopters can transfer forward faster and create lasting benefits.

Wished: company and urgency

Proactive industrial, innovation, and vitality insurance policies concentrating on inexperienced applied sciences are wanted in growing nations to allow them to profit from the inexperienced tech revolution, stated Shamika N. Sirimanne, director of UNCTAD’s expertise and logistics division.

“Growing nations want company and urgency in arising with the best coverage responses,” she stated. “As growing nations reply to right now’s pressing interconnected crises, in addition they must take strategic, long-term motion to construct innovation and technological capacities to spur sustainable financial progress and improve their resilience to future crises.”

UNCTAD calls on governments in growing nations to align environmental, science, expertise, innovation, and industrial insurance policies, and urges them to prioritize funding in greener and extra advanced sectors and supply incentives to shift shopper demand in the direction of greener items.

The report additionally requires an worldwide programme to ensure purchases of tradable inexperienced gadgets, coordinated inexperienced expertise analysis on the multinational stage, elevated help for regional centres of excellence for inexperienced applied sciences and innovation, and a multilateral fund to stimulate inexperienced improvements and improve cooperation between nations.

‘Least prepared’ nations

The report’s “frontier expertise readiness index” reveals that only a few growing nations have the capacities wanted to revenue from such inexperienced tech as blockchain, drones, gene enhancing, nanotechnology, and solar energy.

Rating 166 nations based mostly on ICT, expertise, analysis and improvement, industrial capability, and finance indicators, the index is dominated by such high-income economies because the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the USA. It additionally reveals that nations in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are the least able to harness frontier applied sciences and are in danger of lacking present technological alternatives.

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