The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) technology executive committee kicked off its first meeting, ahead of the seventeenth Conference of the Parties, to be held in Durban, in November and December, on Thursday, in Germany.

The meeting would see three days of deliberations between 20 expert members on how the committee would facilitate the implementation of the Technology Mechanism, which was established in Cancun two years ago, by 2012.

The Technology Mechanism was created to significantly increase the global development, commercialisation, spread and use of environmentally sound technologies.

At Cancun, governments agreed to limit global average temperature increases to below 2 °C and increase finance and technology support to adaptation and mitigation.

Key to achieving this was increased public and private investment in development, deployment, diffusion and transfer of green technologies.

"The challenge we face calls for nothing less than a transformation of the world economy onto a green, sustainable pathway. Technology, both for adaptation and for mitigation, cannot but be at the very centre of this transformation," said UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres.

She added that the Technology Mechanism must provide an effective platform for strengthening collaboration among all countries and engagement of stakeholders, where open exchanges could take place on needs and policies, investment and innovation, and supply and demand.