La autonomía del arbitraje comercial a partir de la STC 6167-2005-HC/TC

Long term sustainable development depends on the choice of technology to be used for economic development to reduce poverty in developing countries. The choice of technology depends on the technology itself, choice of technique, choice of mode of technology transfer, acquisition, service, markets etc. These choices are different in any specific circumstances. While developed countries are looking for more

harmonious and sustainable relationships with the environment, identifying a way out of the accelerating energy and resource crises, to develop a more socially conducive work environment and revitalize local culture to counter the increasingly homogenous and sterile mass culture propagated through the electronic media, the developing countries’ problems are very different. Imitating industrialisation strategies adopted by the developed countries is not solving their problems of poverty and inequality; they are rather increasing them. The main reason is because technology transfer has predominantly served business interests and elite consumer markets in utilising natural resources and cheap labor without any concern for environmental issues. As a result poverty has increased in most of the cases and technologies have acted as an assaulting instrument for the local culture. It is necessary for a developing country to be able to import, adapt the imported

technology if necessary and develop technologies appropriate to their surroundings and compatible with their resource endowments.

These concerns led to the coining of terms such as “intermediate technology” by Schumacher (1973); “appropriate technology” by Morawetz (1974); “progressive technology” by Marsden (1971); “third world technology” by Mathur, (1968); “alternative technology” by Dickson (1974); as well as “grass roots technology”; “kind technology”; “barefoot technology”; “evolutionary technology”; “non-violent technology”; “non-polluting technology”; “indigenous technology”; “soft

technology”; “self-help technology” and “green technology” cited by Ramanathan (1995) from others. The researchers use each of these terms with different orientation in specific relations. However, they all have resulted from inappropriate technology

choices for the developing countries because of the specific issues which they failed to address.

The proliferation of such terms leads to a considerable confusion but they all allude to choices of inappropriate technology. Bowonder (1979) and Ramanathan (1995) express their views on the constraints that adversely affect the choice of appropriate technology. A similar list is complied below:

• The absence of formalised and institutionalised criteria which lead to exclusive or monocular dimensions being used in selecting technology (Murayama, 1973);

• The predominance of exogenous planners in technology selection and in general their inability to extend the field of vision (Linstone, 1969);

• Lack of coordination by different planning entities and their inability to reach a consensus on the criteria to be used and their prioritisation in the choice of appropriate technologies;

• The inability of many developing country firms to comprehend future

complexities and their restricted field of perception that makes it difficult for them to project their aspirations into the future (Bohler, 1973);

• The influence of misconstrued socio-political paradigms in establishing technology choice criteria, for instance the misinterpretation of self sufficiency for self reliance;

• The non-availability of clear information to many developing country firms for making technology choice decisions. Due to their inability and lack of skills to collect relevant data and analyse it independently many firms base their decision on edited information from potential technology suppliers that often tend to stress only the main message that the provider of such

information seeks to convey for their business interest only.

All these limitations tend to work in a synergistic way in weakening the technology choice process as a result of which technology that is not appropriate is often selected. The choice of technology by a developing country might depend on poly- ocular perceptions that incorporate not only pure techno-economic criteria but also others, perhaps even more critical dimensions relevant to a particular setting

(Ramanathan, 1995; Maruyama, 1973). An alternative is to encourage

interdisciplinary interactions to facilitate coordination among planning entities, to reach a consensus on needs assessments and their prioritisation (Jantsch, 1972; Ramanathan, 1995) and use multiple perspectives in decision making to extend the field of vision (Linstone, 1969).

It is important to incorporate all these aspects to guard against the very narrow appropriate technology orientations that have been introduced in the past. There are two approaches to technology choice named “pure technoeconomic approach” and “contingency approach”. The pure technoeconomic approach depends on the technical criteria and the well established economic analysis such as cost benefit analysis. It is the approach that satisfies the most net benefit (Perkins, 1983; Sen, 1962). It is the best fit for the well developed and successfully commercialised surroundings. On the other hand Dahlman and Westphal (1981), Fransman (1985) and Sharif (1983) advocate the incorporation of other factors such as the

technological capability of the potential user, nature of the supportive infrastructure and raw material availability as a contingency approach which is more suitable for many developing countries. The criteria used by the first approach are not

necessarily covered by the other. However, it is important to establish a set of acceptable and usable criteria for technology to be transferred effectively

(Ramanathan, 1995) in order to assist a more sustainable development of developing countries.

The appropriateness of any technology is a dynamic notion. A technology that is not suitable for one place may be suitable for another or in a different time for the same place. It mainly depends on the different or changed operating domain, different or changed objectives or both of these two (Ramanathan, 1995). The simple example provided by Sharif (1983) is chemical pesticide DDT (which was once appropriate now is banned due to its negative impact on the environment) and coal based

technology for power generation in late 70’s and early 80’s (which was given up due to more attractive oil-based technologies and its dirtiness). The appropriateness or choice of technology for sustainable development is not only the matter of

technological intrinsic properties but also a matter of its operating domain, especially developing countries. Bowonder (1979), UNIDO (1981) and Ramanathan (1995)

provide appropriateness criteria for sustainable adaptation of technology as listed in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1: Appropriateness Criteria of Selecting Technology Criteria Preferred path for the attributes to be evaluated Energy intensiveness Should use less energy

Labour intensiveness Should be in accordance with human power endowment of the country but without leading to inefficiency

Cost intensiveness Affordable Productivity High

Durability Easy to maintain (Due to low capability in most cases) Ecological stability Environmentally friendly

Waste recycling Capable of utilising waste Rural orientation Suitable for use in rural areas Income disparity

reduction

Capable of reducing income disparity Socio-cultural

stabilization

Should not have an adverse impact on socio-cultural conditions Local ownership Capable of facilitating local ownership

Scale of operation Suitable for the use of small and medium scale Raw material

requirements

Ability to use locally available raw material Import substitution Local resource utilization

Sectoral effectiveness Capable of contributing to more than one economic sector such as power, agriculture, forestry, industry etc.

Learnability Easy to impart operation and maintenance skills Delocalisation Capable of being diffused into many localities Technological

complexity

Degree of ease of use

Quality characteristics Degree of contribution towards the improvement of the quality output Profitability Degree of enhancement of profitability

Utility adjusted price ratio

Comparison with other alternative technologies Demonstrated

usefulness

Number of firms already using the technology

State-of-the-art State-of the-art of the technology in comparison to technology existing Interaction The type of interaction that the technology will have with other concurrent

technologies currently being used by the organisation – independent, complementary, contingent or substitute

Suppliers actions Degree of facilitation by supplier in terms of market selection, market segmentation, promotional communications, pricing and infrastructure development (after sales service, spare parts supply, troubleshooting etc.) Government actions Degree of facilitation by the government in terms of infrastructure

development, promotional communication and regulation/promotion (fiscal and financial incentives etc.)

The problem of technology choice however does not end with the selection of a suitable technology. An equally important problem is related to the choice of a suitable technology transfer mechanism that could effectively transfer the technology to the potential user in the developing countries and this is discussed in the next section.