Developing countries risk missing out on economic opportunities from green technologies if governments and international agencies do not act decisively, a UN agency said. Economic inequality is likely to rise as developed countries stand to reap the most from green technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and electric vehicles, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in its technology and innovation report.

We are at the beginning of a technological revolution based on green technologies, said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebecca Greenspan. This new wave of technological change will have a huge impact on the global economy. Developing countries must create more value from this technological revolution in order to grow their economies.

The U.N. agency estimates that green technology could create a market worth more than $9.5 trillion by 2030, about three times the size of India's economy, currently the world's fifth-largest. Missing out on this technology wave due to insufficient policy attention or lack of targeted capacity-building investments will have long-term negative consequences, Ms Greenspan said.

Total green technology exports from developed countries jumped from about $60 billion in 2018 to more than $156 billion in 2021, according to UNCTAD. Meanwhile, developing country exports rose from $57 billion to just about $75 billion, and their share of global exports fell below 33 percent. Only a handful of developing countries have the capabilities needed to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain, drones and solar energy, UNCTAD said.

The U.N. agency's Frontier Technology Readiness Index ranks 166 countries on criteria such as research and development and industrial capacity, with high-income countries such as the United States, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland and the Netherlands leading the way. The second quarter of the list includes emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and Russia. Countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are the least prepared to take advantage of frontier technologies and risk missing out on current technological opportunities, according to UNCTAD.

To benefit from the green technology revolution, developing countries need active industrial, innovation and energy policies targeting green technologies, said Shamika Sirimanne, Director of UNCTAD's Technology and Logistics Division.

Developing countries need initiative and urgency to come up with the right policy responses. As developing countries respond to today's urgent and interconnected crises, they also need to take strategic, long-term action to build innovation and technological capacity to stimulate sustainable economic growth and enhance their ability to respond to future crises.

Developing countries should be allowed to protect their nascent green industries through tariffs, subsidies and public procurement in accordance with international trade regulations, the report said. UNCTAD also recommends the same approach used during the Covid-19 outbreak, which allowed some countries to produce and distribute vaccines without the consent of the patent holder. This will give manufacturers in developing countries faster access to key green technologies.

The IEA said in its World Energy Outlook in 2022 that investment in renewable energy would need to double to more than $4 trillion by the end of the decade to meet its net-zero emissions target by 2050. The agency's policy scenarios, based on the latest global policy settings, project clean energy investment to rise to just over $2 trillion by 2030.Editor/XingWentao