Ahead of the Cancun climate change conference, about 50 countries on Tuesday began discussions to decide on the best mechanism to ensure that existing technologies that help people in adapting to impacts of climate change are shared with countries that are likely to be the worst affected.

An agreement on transfer of technology ? from countries that possess them to ones that need them the most ? is envisaged as one of the several building blocks of a larger international treaty on climate change, for which negotiations are going on for years.

These talks would would take place again at Cancun in Mexico from November 29.

Unlike last year, when expectations were sky-high from the Copenhagen conference ? which incidentally turned out to be big failure ?the countries are pegging their hopes at realistic levels this time and trying to extract smaller successes from the Cancun meeting rather than going for the big ambitious treaty.

An agreement on a financial arrangement ? to help poorer countries deal with the impacts of climate change ? and on a technology architecture are two goals that is being viewed as achievables from Cancun.

The two-day seminar, that got underway in New Delhi on Tuesday, is the second in the series. The first was held last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference.

Opening the discussions, environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the countries needed to focus their energies at evolving a common ground on how technology is to be shared. He said there were existing models for international cooperation ? in agriculture and physical sciences ? that can be replicated for climate change and a knowledge-pool created for the benefit of countries that do not have the resources to develop such technologies by themselves.

Ramesh said the consultative group on international agricultural research (CGIAR), which helped usher in the Green Revolution, was a good example to follow.

The countries are expected to leave aside contentious issues on technology transfer ? like how to deal with intellectual property rights ? for the time being and concentrate on the broadly agreed principles.

The discussions would focus around the governance mechanism for sharing of technologies, the plan of action over the next few years that would also include identification of relevant technologies, and the sources of funding for enabling such technology transfer.