Excellencies, distinguished speakers, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you happen to be, and let me add my welcome to this High-Level Policy Session on ICT Applications and Services / e-Environment / Climate Change.
We are very grateful to the excellent panellists we have speaking at this session for sparing their time to be with us, and many thanks to William Njoroge for acting as the high level rack facilitator.
This is another topic at the core of ITU’s mission as the UN specialized agency for ICTs. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of being connected like never before, to keep abreast of health advice, to continue working and studying, shopping and staying in touch with loved ones.
However, as we know this has benefited just over half the world’s population. Around 3.7 billion people are still unconnected, mostly those living in rural areas and remote communities, which is why bringing these people online is more important now than ever before and why this session, like all WSIS Forum sessions, offers the opportunity to exchange best practices, success stories and good ideas on how to address this vital challenge.
Although connectivity is a problem for remote and sparsely populated communities due to the challenges of terrain, and the return on investment, it is not simply a problem of connectivity as statistics show over 90% of the world population is covered by at least 3G. It is more a problem of affordability, having the relevant content in the local language, making people aware of the benefits and giving them the digital skills to take advantage of the connection.
This session also focuses on environment and climate change: one of the greatest challenges of our time and a topic that is very close to my heart! Since joining ITU in 2007 I have devoted a lot of energy to raising the importance of digital technologies to fight climate change. I don’t think anyone can doubt the importance of technology, including emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, 5G and others, for supporting the transformational changes so urgently needed for the environment.
ITU helps the use of digital technologies for monitoring, mitigating and adapting to climate change and works on addressing climate change due to ICTs and through ICTs. We are leveraging the power of technology in critical areas ranging from smart cities to natural disaster risk reduction, e-waste and energy consumption, we develop international standards that support the sustainable use of ICTs, and we allocate and coordinate the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbits allowing satellite observations that play a significant role in monitoring oceans, marine life and terrestrial ecosystems.
However, when looking at the latest climate science, more has to be done by all of us. I am a big proponent of bringing all stakeholders together – public and private -- to pool our resources for the common good, and the WSIS Forum is a perfect platform for this. The pandemic has taught us many lessons on how to improve our sustainability and virtual events such as this are an excellent example of how we need to apply these lessons for the future.
Under the leadership of the ITU, the WSIS Forum serves as a global multistakeholder platform to bring together world leaders, international organisations, private sector, academia, and civil society - all major stakeholders to discuss, share experiences, and foster partnerships to address these and other key issues that are necessary to build a truly global information society, and strengthen the impact of ICTs for sustainable development.
Cross-industry and public-private sector collaboration is essential, this has driven the work of ITU from its beginning 155 years ago, and this multistakeholder approach to collaboration is at the heart of the WSIS Forum.
ITU has been working with all WSIS stakeholders to strengthen the alignment of the WSIS process with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The WSIS Action Lines are now a key framework for progress on the implementation of the SDGs.
So let me thank you all for joining us, I will now hand back to William to pose questions to our excellent speakers. I am sure we will have a very enlightening and fruitful discussion.
Thank you.