The international economics of resources and resource ... - Index of

248 R. Walz
Based on the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental dumping
mechanism it can be argued that there might be a disincentive for strong
environmental policies in the NICs in order to attract pollution intensive industries
(Copeland and Taylor 2004). However, there are also different incentives for NICs to
push for sustainability technologies:
& Firstly, environmental problems and related health issues are becoming major
issues within NICs, and many of the sustainability technologies would help to
improve this domestic environmental pressure.
& Secondly, many analyzed sustainability technologies improve the infrastructure,
e.g. in the energy, water or transportation sector, or address the growing demand
for raw materials. Thus, they are also part of an economic modernization
strategy.
& Thirdly, moving towards environmental sustainability will create huge international
markets for sustainability technologies. It is estimated that the sustainability
technologies will be a major market in the future, with average annual growth
rates for technology demand in the fields of energy supply, energy efficiency,
transport, water technologies and material efficiency in the order of 5 to 8% per
year. These high growth rates will lead to an annual demand for technologies in
these five fields above 2,000 billion Euro in 2020 (Roland Berger 2007; Ecorys
et al. 2009). Thus, another incentive is that NICs engage in the development and
production of these technologies and compete with the countries of the North for
lead roles in supplying the world market with sustainability technologies.
The debate on technological catch-up and leapfrogging can be traced back some
time. It gained prominence among the scholars developing an evolutionary theory of
trade (Soete 1985; Perez and Soete 1988; Dosi et al. 1990). Technological
cooperation focuses on the knowledge base required by the technologies and on
enabling competences in the countries. Since the end of the 1980’s, the concepts of
Social or Absorptive Capacity (Abramovitz 1986; Cohen and Levinthal 1990) and
technological capabilities (Lall 1992; Bell and Pavitt 1993) are widely known. The
results of the catching-up research in the last years (e.g. Fagerberg and Godinho
2005; Nelson 2007; Malerba and Nelson 2008) and of empirical studies on
developing capabilities especially in the context of the Asian countries (Lall 1998;
Lee and Lim 2001; Lee 2005; Lee and Lim 2005; Rasiah 2008) have underlined the
importance of absorptive capacity and competence building. Furthermore, there is
increasing debate about the changing nature of technology transfer and cooperation
with regard to learning and knowledge acquisition. One aspect to consider is the
tendency that the build up of technological and production capabilities are becoming
increasingly separated (Bell and Pavitt 1993). Another aspect relates to the effect of
globalization on the mechanisms for knowledge dissemination. Archibugi and
Pietrobelli (2003) stress the point that importing technology has per se little impact
on learning, and call for policies to upgrade cooperation strategies towards
technological partnering. Nelson (2007) highlights the changing legal environment
and the fact that the scientific and technical communities have been moving much
closer together. All these factors lead to the conclusion that indigenous competences
in sustainability related science and technology fields are increasingly a prerequisite
for the successful absorption of sustainability technologies in NICs.