​Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General

Information and Communication Technologies - Accelerating Climate Action: Opportunities for lower emissions, resilience building and growth : A joint ICC-GeSI Conference

09 June 2015, Bonn, Germany

Opportunities for innovative collaboration between the UN Climate process (UNFCCC and the private sector) – Insight from the ICT sector

Good afternoon. I am going to give a brief introduction to ITU and a presentation of past, current and future collaboration between ITU and GeSI, as an effective example of UN and private sector collaboration.

ITU is an organization that for 150 years has been bringing together the public and private sector to work towards connecting the world.

From its inception in 1865 the private sector has played a significant role in ITU, and up until ITU became the specialized UN agency for ICTs in 1947, private sector companies could even acceded to the ITU Convention along with Member States.

So the ITU itself is a model of collaboration between the public and private sectors that work together to:

• define interoperable ICT solutions,
• deploy the networks that connect over 6 billion people to the information society,
• and endeavor to make ICT services more affordable, so that the benefits of the information society reach everyone.

Through its membership of 193 Member States, over 700 private sector entities, civil society and close to 100 academic members ITU has been key to building the telecommunication ecosystem.

Today, ITU collaborates with a large number of organizations and initiatives on a number of topics, such as sustainability, cybersecurity and digital inclusion, amongst others.

And of course the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) is one of the key organizations with which ITU collaborates.

ITU and GeSI have worked together in promoting sustainability in the ICT sector for over 10 years.

This collaboration has included the organization of joint activities at key events of the UNFCCC, such as COP15 in Copenhagen and COP17 in Durban.

The result of this collaboration has been a better global understanding of the role and responsibility that the ICT sector has to promote a sustainable future, and an engagement of the whole ICT sector in working towards this end.

In this context the findings of the Smart 2020 report, the predecessor of the report launched today played a significant part in raising the awareness of the important role of ICTs in combating climate change, and I am sure the new report will be equally successful in doing this.

Today networks, devices and services are more resource efficient, and new ICT solutions reduce the environmental footprint of other sectors such as the energy and transport sectors.

We have done this together, working side by side around concrete goals and initiatives, producing joint methodologies and reports, and organizing joint events, and by advocating together the role of ICTs for sustainability in global platforms, such as the UNFCCC, the Rio+20 conference and more recently the post 2015 negotiations.

So let me present the most recent collaboration between ITU and GeSI, in the context of the post 2015 agenda.

An ITU/GeSI side event on the 'Means of Implementation and Global Partnership for Sustainable Development - the role of ICTs' was held on 21 April at the UN Headquarters in New York. 

The event was attended by Member States and civil society, and we had speakers from ICANN, Internet Society and the Rwanda Mission, and resulted in the GeSI/ITU 'Call to Action', which was then delivered to the Member States taking part in the negotiations on the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda.

The Call to Action highlights the following:

• The need for all stakeholders to fully recognize the transformative role of ICT solutions in fostering sustainable development and addressing today's most urgent challenges, including climate change.
• The need to take note of existing research in this field and that making ICTs universally available can deliver important, cross-cutting synergies between different sectors.
• That Private sector companies are engaged in important innovation in the ICT field to develop new solutions, and are contributing positively to sustainability through technology transfer and the use of improved and cleaner technologies for new purposes.

The call to action appealed to all stakeholders to:

• Ensure that post-2015 framework acknowledges the vital role of emerging and transformative ICT solutions across different sectors.
• Leverage and upgrade existing and widely deployed ICT infrastructure, and focus on making it universally available.
• Create an enabling policy framework that supports the deployment of innovative ICT solutions, for example, in the areas of e-health, smart technologies (such as smart grids), transport and mobility, food and agriculture.

GeSI/ITU collaboration is a unique model of collaboration, which proved successful in the climate change conferences and I believe can be replicated in the context of the post 2015. It is very important that the Summit in September recognizes the importance of ICTs to the implementation of all the SDGs.

Looking into the future we have new initiatives in which we hope to work together, such as the implementation of the new ITU Connect 2020 Agenda, a global vision agreed at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in November last year.

Through the Connect 2020 Agenda ITU Member States committed to work towards the shared vision of "an information society, empowered by the interconnected world, where telecommunication/ICT enables and accelerates socially, economically and environmentally sustainable growth and development for everyone".

The agenda includes a specific goal to promote sustainability in the ICT sector, and targets to achieve important reduction of GHG emissions by 2020.

Connect 2020 Agenda is therefore a framework for collaboration that can bring together the public and private sectors to ensure the ICT sector supports the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Thank you for your attention and I invite you all to join us in achieving these goals.