As established in the article ‘Trade in clean energy technologies: sliding from protection to protectionism through obligations for technology transfer in climate change law, or Vice Versa?’, by authors Koskina, Farah, and Ibrahim, the unequal distribution of responsibility is one of the main pillars of the Global South clean energy technology transfer claims. Some developing nations claim that developed nations had their share of environmental degradation to reach and maintain their actual level of development. Now that we begin to face the worst impacts of climate change and the climate emergency is more evident than ever before, governments face an ever-growing pressure to adopt measures to ensure sustainable development and palliate the environmental catastrophe. But already since the Rio Convention and before, developing nations criticized the imposition of international environmental regulation as a way to block Southern development and maintain Northern global prominence, and claimed for a regulation that took into account the rights of developing nations to reach similar level of development as developed ones as well as the environment, and a way of doing so was devoting resources to help developing nations to implement sustainable development models. This critique is not exaggerated. Historically, Northern nations have contributed the most to environmental degradation by a great margin while developing nations, who contribute the least, are the most vulnerable to it. Even in the cases where developing nations cause great environmental damage, more often than not developed nations are behind. Bangladesh’ textile industry, which causes great environmental impact, produces mainly for Western companies such as those related to Inditex and its production goes mostly to exports towards developed nations. At the same time, as the article also cites, some of these developing nations also score highly in regard to environmental protection and perform groundbreaking environmental projects, being North Africa’s Green Wall a great example. Therefore, to make justice to the past, and help protect its own future, developed countries should make an extra effort to cooperate and collaborate with developing nations to establish an international framework focused on environmental protection and global equitable sustainable development.
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