GeSI side event - 76th UN General Assembly High-level segment

The UN Secretary-General’s address to this session of the UN General Assembly made it clear that we are at a time of great concern – “on the edge of an abyss” in his words. One of the six Great Divides he mentioned was the climate divide, and he referred to the climate alarm bells ringing at fever pitch, we must get serious and we must act fast he said. The incoming President of the General Assembly was somewhat more positive announcing his “five rays of hope” based upon our witnessing “incredible acts of kindness and compassion that reaffirmed our common humanity and collective strength”.

One clear ray of hope, in my opinion, is the potential application of innovative technology, in particular information and communications technology – ICTs – to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This is something ITU has been advocating for almost 15 years now. ITU is the UN specialized agency for ICTs, and when I refer to ITU I mean the secretariat and more importantly the membership: 193 Member States, but also unusually for a UN agency, several hundred private sector companies, as well as academia and civil society - a truly international public-private partnership collaborating together.

This large and ever more diverse membership has enabled ITU to respond to the challenges of the times, including climate change. It is the reason that ITU and GeSI have had a close collaborative relationship for many years, as most of GeSI’s members are also ITU’s members.

We fully support GeSI’s recently launched ‘Digital with Purpose Movement’ which is already gaining a lot of attraction inside and outside the tech sector, with more and more companies signing the pledge. It signals the increasing commitment of the private sector to both the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as was recognised by the UN Secretary-General in his opening address, and I look forward to continuing to strengthen ITU’s cooperation with GeSI and these companies and others in the lead up to COP26 and beyond. 

So let me give you three examples where I believe ITU’s experience holds lessons for businesses, and the way we can step up public-private collaboration on climate action.  

My first example concerns the development of international standards, a core function of ITU. I often liken standards to a universal language, one that brings people, businesses, and economies and societies together. And that is exactly what our standard ITU L.1470 does. This new ITU standard details the emission-reduction trajectories needed to cut the ICT sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in line with the climate targets set in the Paris Agreement. Its recommended emission-reduction targets are the first targets specific to the ICT industry to be approved by the Science Based Target Initiative and was developed in collaboration with several partners, including GeSI. It is a testament to the power of collaboration, and I am confident that it will help the ICT sector reduce its growing environmental footprint and get on a decarbonization pathway towards net zero emissions. 

My second example is smart sustainable cities. Right now cities produce more than 70% of carbon emissions globally every year. This figure will only grow worse as almost 70% of the world’s population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050. If you add to this the warning in last month’s report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that heat, flooding, sea level rise and other aspects of climate change may be magnified for cities, there is no time to waste in accelerating the transition to smart sustainable cities. We need smart energy, smart buildings and smart mobility. Just as importantly, we need to be able to measure cities’ progress. The United 4 Smart Sustainable Cities initiative led by ITU has set some key performance indicators currently used in more than 100 cities around the world. Based on an ITU standard aligned with the SDGs, these indicators have set a benchmark for best practices, providing a practical framework to assess each city’s progress towards net-zero emissions. 

My last example is space. Satellite earth observation and remote sensing systems are becoming increasingly vital as countries seek tools to address threats posed by extreme weather conditions and climate change. For example, WMO estimates that billions of work hours have been lost through heat alone. What is more, studies have shown that Earth observation can contribute to the measurement of many of the indicators linked to the SDGs. Here too ITU plays a significant role by maintaining the Radio Regulations, the only international treaty on the use of the radio spectrum and satellite orbits which allocates the spectrum for these systems and which protects it from harmful interference.

These examples show how good public-private collaboration can leverage ICTs as a source for good. When the climate talks open in Glasgow in November, I believe that expectations for ICTs will be high on the agenda, after what these technologies have achieved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gone is the time when I was asked why ITU should publish a report on ICTs and climate change - fifteen years ago. We must be more ambitious on climate action and what technology can accomplish. And we must ensure that we close the climate divide at a time when ICTs are still out of reach, unaffordable, irrelevant, unsafe or too complicated to use for almost half the world’s population – even if they have access to energy - which as we heard in today’s High-level Dialogue on Energy, close to 760 million people still don’t have.

As the UN Secretary-General says, the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7-degrees of heating. It is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that today’s digital transformation fulfils its promise to deliver on the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – and make sure it does so before it is too late. 

I am encouraged to see the level of commitment to the pledge in the Digital with Purpose Initiative - which has real impact and not just nice words - and as we look towards COP26 it is my hope that we can build on this commitment to pool our resources for the common good. 

Thank you.