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Competences for green development <strong>and</strong> leapfrogging 261<br />

opportunities for NICs to use the latest environmentally more friendly technology,<br />

leading to a technological leapfrogging. However, this requires an interest <strong>of</strong> the<br />

NICs to push in this direction. One perspective is that these technologies help to<br />

reduce national environmental problems <strong>and</strong> to modernize the infrastructure.<br />

Another incentive is that by moving towards the latest sustainability relevant<br />

technologies, NICs might gain enough competences in order to compete on the<br />

world market in this growing market segment. Both perspectives require that NICs<br />

build up (technological <strong>and</strong> institutional) competences in the field <strong>of</strong> these<br />

technologies <strong>and</strong> their diffusion.<br />

In this paper, a first picture on the existing (technological) competences <strong>of</strong> NICs<br />

in the field <strong>of</strong> sustainability relevant technologies is presented. Various indicators are<br />

used, which are, however, not without caveats. Thus, the results must be interpreted<br />

with caution.<br />

<strong>The</strong> various indicators do not show a clear-cut picture. <strong>The</strong> differences in the<br />

results for the general innovation capabilities between the survey based methodology<br />

<strong>and</strong> the general R&D indicators (see chapter 3) point to the importance <strong>of</strong> not only<br />

relying on a single indicator. Nevertheless, there are some very robust results: <strong>The</strong><br />

general innovation capabilities differ substantially within NICs, with Korea <strong>and</strong><br />

Singapore showing the most favorable general innovation conditions <strong>and</strong> the highest<br />

absorptive capacity for new technologies.<br />

<strong>The</strong> innovation indicators with regard to the sustainability relevant technologies<br />

also show that NICs are highly heterogeneous. Furthermore, the increase in<br />

capabilities varies, but is especially high in the South (East) Asian countries.<br />

Combining the different criteria (Table 1), the following clusters can be observed:<br />

& higher level <strong>of</strong> general absorptive capability, but without specialization on<br />

sustainability technologies: Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (<strong>and</strong> perhaps China,<br />

especially if the overall size <strong>of</strong> the country is taken into account),<br />

& specialization on sustainability with a medium overall level <strong>of</strong> general absorptive<br />

capability: Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa,<br />

& medium overall level <strong>of</strong> general absorptive capability, without specialization on<br />

sustainability technologies: Argentina, India, <strong>and</strong> Chile,<br />

& lower overall level <strong>of</strong> technological capability: Venezuela, Thail<strong>and</strong>, Philippines,<br />

Indonesia.<br />

<strong>The</strong> analysis also reveals that there are quite considerable differences between the<br />

technological sustainability areas within the NICs, which are reflected in the<br />

specialization patterns. In general, NICs specialize more on material efficiency than<br />

on the other sustainability technologies. Thus, especially material efficiency seems to<br />

be a promising field for leapfrogging. For some <strong>of</strong> the NICs, the high specialization<br />

on material efficiency technologies can be traced back to a very high specialization<br />

on renewable <strong><strong>resource</strong>s</strong> (e.g. Malaysia, Brazil). This can be explained by the<br />

availability <strong>of</strong> natural <strong>resource</strong> base in these countries, which make an augmentation<br />

with technological competences in this field especially attractive. In other NICs, e.g.<br />

China <strong>and</strong> India, there is a tremendous increase in the build up <strong>of</strong> knowledge in<br />

material efficiency. This can be perhaps explained by the need to augment traditional<br />

strategies to secure <strong>resource</strong> availability by the additional option <strong>of</strong> material<br />

efficiency.

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