China's top official on climate change on Thursday called on the international community to build a mechanism for technology development and transfer to help tackle problems associated with global warming.

Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said: "The core of the mechanism must be technology transfer, and it should have sufficient funding to support such transfers."

Xie, who was China's chief negotiator at the United Nations' conference on climate change held last year in Bali, was speaking at a two-day forum on climate change and science and technology innovation that opened on Thursday in Beijing.

The forum provides a platform for discussing the Chinese government's ideas on how to promote international technology transfers.

The UN should set up a panel to assess technology development and transfer, its funding and effectiveness, Xie said.

Wealthy countries should offer financial incentives to domestic developers to encourage technology transfer and provide training and pilot programs to developing countries, he said.

Zou Ji, a professor at the Renmin University of China and a delegate to the UN talks on climate change, said: "This is the first time China has officially made such a proposal to the UN.

"Xie's suggestions will be raised at the next round of international negotiations, which follow talks on the Bali road map," he said.

The road map is designed to be a more inclusive successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and commits 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent between now and 2012.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that according to a recent survey, 39 percent of all clean development mechanism (CDM) projects, accounting for 64 percent of the annual emission reductions, claim to involve technology transfer.

CDM is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol that allows industrialized nations with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries, as an alternative to undertaking more expensive emission reduction projects at home. China has the most CDM projects registered with the UN.

However, over the past 15 years, there has been no substantial progress in technology transfer from rich countries to developing countries, Xie said.

(China Daily April 25, 2008)