Contributions from low- and middle-income countries to the development of climate change adaptation technologies: A patent analysis

While Climate change is a global phenomenon, low- and middle-income income countries (LMIC) experience particularly great risks posed by the adverse effects of global warming. Prior research shows that most climate change adaptation technologies (CCAT) are invented in high-income countries (HIC) with few studies analysing the contributions made by LMIC inventors to the development of CCAT technologies. Using the Y02A CPC class, we identify 56,045 CCAT-related international patent families being filed from 1980 to 2019, out of which about 10% seem to be developed with contributions from LMIC-based inventors (3.5% excluding China and India). Data has been analysed chronologically comparing patenting across the six Y02 groups, across country groups and across organisations for upper-middle and lower-middle income countries. While CCAT patenting globally increased by 5.8% annually on average, CCAT patenting with LMIC contributions increased by 15.7% annually thus indicating that LMIC contribute over proportionally to CCAT development. LMIC-based inventors seem to contribute mostly to CCAT development in human health technologies and least to the development of indirect adaptation technologies. Particularly low-income countries (LIC) appear to be more specialised in human health and agriculture. In LMIC, governmental, non-profit organisations, and universities play an important role for CCAT development. While the results contribute to filling the knowledge gap about LMIC contributions to CCAT development, the actual contributions of LMIC inventors to CCAT development are likely to be much higher given our results are derived from an analysis of patent data. Future research should aim to develop an understanding of how to proxy for this underestimation.