Cristian Timmermann

International negotiations on anthropogenic climate change are far from running smoothly. Opinions are deeply divided on what are the respective responsibilities of developed and developing countries with regard to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the alleviation of the negative effects of global warming. A major bone of contention concerns the role of intellectual property rights (especially patents) in the development and diffusion of climate-friendly technologies. While developing countries consider IPRs as a formidable barrier to the rapid transfer and the widest possible diffusion of such technologies, developed countries, by contrast, see IPRs as a vital prerequisite for the development and transfer of these same technologies. This debate shows some similarity with the earlier debate on patents and access to lifesaving medicines, although there are also important differences. In our contribution we will explore both the analogies and the differences with this earlier debate. To provide a focus for our discussion, we will examine whether something similar to the Health Impact Fund (HIF), which has been proposed by philosopher Thomas Pogge as a reasonable solution to the ethical dilemmas of protection and accessibility in the field of pharmaceuticals, can also be elaborated for the development and diffusion of climate-friendly technologies. Thus the central question is how an analogous ‘Climate Impact Fund’ would look like and how it would work. This whole exercise will also yield a normative yardstick for assessing the various designs for a Green Climate Fund or a Technology Mechanism that are currently on the table of the international climate negotiations.

Taking people’s longevity as a measure of good life, humankind can proudly say that the average person is living a much longer life than ever before. The AIDS epidemic has however for the first time in decades stalled and in some cases even reverted this trend in a number of countries. Climate change is increasingly becoming a major challenge for food security and we can anticipate that hunger caused by crop damages will become much more common. -/- Since many of the challenges humanity faced in the past were overcome by inventive solutions coming from the life sciences, we are compelled to reconsider how we incentivize science and technology development so that those in need can benefit more broadly from scientific research. There is a huge portion of the world population that is in urgent need for medicines to combat diseases that are currently neglected by the scientific community and could immensely benefit from agricultural research that specifically targets their environmental conditions. At the same time efforts have to be made to make the fruits of current and future research more widely accessible. These changes would have to be backed by a range of moral arguments to attract people with diverging notions of global justice. This article explores the main ethical theories used to demand a greater share in the benefits from scientific progress for the poor. Since life sciences bring about a number of special concerns, a short list of conflictive issues is also offered.