COLUMN ONE : Clearing the Way to Clean Air : Non-polluting equipment and know-how must somehow pass to developing nations. The Rio summit sheds light on the obstacles in their path.

A delegate from India to the global environmental summit here bemoaned his country’s 18 years of efforts to purchase American technology for making chemicals that are used in refrigeration.

Not until 1986 did India get the technology--just as manufacturers were beginning to realize how environmentally harmful their product was. Three years later, the world moved to protect the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation by rapidly phasing out use of the ozone-depleting chemicals.

“These are the games the developed world has been playing with us,” the Indian snapped.

The United Nations-sponsored Conference on Environment and Development is striving to ensure that such misguided and potentially environment-devastating transfers of technology are not repeated.

Without environmentally sound industry, developing countries in the next century will emit destructive gases and pollutants in amounts that dwarf the current, already hazardous levels of emissions from the industrialized world.

“Technology is key,” said India’s Environmental Minister Kamal Nath.

But the history of technology-sharing with the world’s poor is littered with cases in which recipient nations have been unable to use the equipment effectively, because of a lack of know-how or internal bureaucratic meddling. Sometimes they have resorted to polluting technology simply because it was cheaper.

“Some developing countries are using technologies that the United States abandoned 50 or 60 years ago,” said Donald H. Pearlman, an American lobbyist representing the coal industry, electrical utilities and railroads here. “The new technologies are so much more energy efficient.”

These new technologies include everything from so-called “clean coal” to methods of making aluminum and steel to energy-efficient lighting and refrigeration. The United States, Japan and Germany are said to be leaders in the kind of equipment and knowledge the poorer countries require if they are to avoid the environmental mistakes of the industrialized world.

More than money and equipment will be needed, however. Previously, technology has been sold to developing countries without follow-up monitoring to ensure it is used correctly.

An industry representative here told of an American businessman who delivered equipment to a developing nation and then was suddenly called away on other matters. When he returned a year later, the equipment was still in boxes.

Another business representative recalled that an American company built a power plant in a Middle Eastern nation and had to replace it every three years--when it should have lasted 20 to 30 years--because of lack of maintenance.

Sometimes poor planning by the developing country is at fault. China used Western help to build a coal-fired power plant but, because of bureaucratic restrictions, it was located far from the coal supply, the business official said. “There was no means of getting the coal to the plant,” he said.

Environmental groups also have made mistakes in attempting to supply technology to protect the environment in developing countries.

T. J. Glauthier, a technology expert with the World Wildlife Fund, said the environmental group not long ago provided villages in Pakistan with stoves designed to burn fuel efficiently. The idea was to reduce villagers’ need to ravage the surrounding hillsides of brush and trees for fuel.

While visiting the villages a year after the project was established, Glauthier learned that the villagers cooked outside half the year, so the new stoves were irrelevant much of the time. Moreover, no one had bothered to explain how to repair cracks in the stoves that had made them less efficient.

Despite the good intentions in Rio, provisions on technology have been among the most contentious in almost every treaty and document being negotiated. Poorer nations are demanding the “transfer” of sound technology, either for free or at discount prices. Rich countries, attempting to protect their industries and patents, insist on using the term “technology cooperation.”

The rift between rich and poor is one of priorities.

Poor countries first want to feed their people and provide them with a decent standard of living. They say they cannot afford the kind of technology needed to reduce emissions of harmful gases, nor can they bar their citizens from cutting forests for wood when there is no other fuel available. In their view, if the rest of the world wants them to industrialize without harming the environment, the developed counties must pay. For poor countries, environmental concerns come second.

Developed nations, which already enjoy the comforts produced by industrialization, are alarmed by the environmental costs of achieving their standards of living. They put a much greater emphasis on protecting the environment, and fear that whatever steps they take will be inadequate unless the poorer countries join them. They say they would like to see the entire world benefit from the cleanest technology, but that most of it is owned by private corporations and cannot be given away.

As a result, what has emerged from Rio is muddled. A treaty to curb global warming, for instance, asks for technological cooperation but defines it as “including” transfers. The inability of time-pressed and overburdened negotiators to establish specific measures for technology-sharing will require participants to thrash out precise details at future forums.

At least the stage is being set. Future mechanisms for technology-sharing under discussion include more joint ventures by businesses from industrialized nations with governments or industries in poorer countries, and changes in laws to give industries financial incentives to share their know-how with the Third World.

Also being talked about are government programs to help domestic industry overcome barriers for investing abroad, the purchase of patents by government or international bodies that would, in turn, provide them free or at discount rates to the needy, or, most commonly, distribution of financial aid to cover the difference in cost between an outdated, polluting technology and a cleaner, more efficient one.

Even if the transfers go forward, Western technology may have to be adapted to meet local needs. If American businessmen want to sell technology for more efficient coal burning, for example, the equipment may have to be modified to suit the inferior grade of coal in many developing countries. “One person described coal in some of those countries as being only a slight cut above dirt,” Pearlman said.

The Indian delegate, who asked not to be named, noted that India once purchased paper-making technology from a European country. The plants spewed out horrendous pollution. Now India has gone back to that country in search of cleaner plants, but the sellers can not supply them at the small-scale size India needs.

Other obstacles to clean development in the Third World persist. Yukio Sugano, the Japanese minister to the United Nations, said developing countries often lack strong environmental laws and do not want to pay for the cleanest technology available.

Japan, for instance, has equipment that will remove 95% of a smokestack’s emissions of sulfur, which causes acid rain. “But,” Sugano said, “when we recommend to developing countries that desulfurization be included (in a power plant), the countries are normally reluctant to accept the additional 20% cost” and choose instead to spend the aid on other projects.

American business representatives complain that developing countries often discourage foreign investment by restricting the profits that can be taken out, requiring equal partnerships with local industries, violating patent protections or requiring use of locally made equipment that is inferior to what is produced in the United States.

One American businessman here, when told of India’s complaints about being sold inferior U.S. technology, was indignant.

“India steals technology,” he groused, a charge India’s environmental minister denied.

Like most business representatives here, the American refused to be identified for fear of offending developing countries whose diplomats are being lobbied by U.S. business on the treaties and other accords.

He complained that India, which wants access to American clean-coal technology, has allowed its companies to copy American products in violation of patents, and that India often changes operating rules for foreign firms once they have made substantial investments in the country.

John Shlaes, who leads the Global Climate Coalition, a lobby representing a cross section of American business, said the summit here has produced a “new spirit” that will reduce many of the difficulties American companies have faced abroad.

The global warming treaty, for instance, requires nations to establish emissions inventories and energy strategies. Shlaes foresees opportunities for American business to help prepare those plans for developing countries, and, in the process, to learn what technology the countries need before they rush in with projects doomed to fail.

“It makes sense to test the system (for technology cooperation) by doing this in a staged way,” he said. “By the same token, American business will go look for opportunities where opportunities exist. . . . It’s in their economic interest to do it.”

To promote technological assistance, the Japanese government has financed a technical center under U.N. auspices in Japan for research and for training Third World researchers and business interests.

President Bush is proposing a “Technology Cooperation Corps,” a two- to- three-year project to investigate the technological needs of developing countries, the extent American firms can provide it, the barriers--such as inadequate respect for patents--to U.S. investment, and the financial assistance available for projects in the Third World.

Details have yet to be fleshed out. Reaction has ranged from enthusiasm to cautious interest among business interests to disappointment among environmentalists who complain that the corps is envisioned only as a short-term effort.

In any case, no one believes that altering the course of development in poor nations to reflect environmental concerns will come easily or quickly.

“We cannot anticipate a situation that can be improved in a very short time,” said Japan’s Sugano, “but aid can accelerate it.”

Without adequate technological assistance, the ambitious initiatives produced by the summit will be meaningless, said the World Wildlife’s Glauthier.

“Technology transfer has really been the stepchild of the conference,” he said. “All the attention has gone to climate change and the biological diversity treaties, which are important. But in the end, after we get the agenda in place, what’s really going to make the difference is what we do with technology.”