COP26 Side-event - "How do we accelerate Climate Action? Digital innovation, collaboration and the path to net zero"

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It is a pleasure to join you today at the invitation of GeSI to discuss how digital innovation and collaboration can accelerate climate action.

 

ITU and GeSI have worked together in promoting sustainability in the information and communication technology sector for over 15 years, and I am proud to have been a member of the GeSI Board for most of that time. This collaboration has included the organization of joint activities at many previous climate change conferences, and I believe this has increased the global awareness of the role that the ICT sector can play in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Climate action is now more critical than ever before, as has been made abundantly clear by the experts, the science, and the evidence of our own eyes. As the UN Secretary-General said on Monday: “climate action tops the list of people’s concerns, across countries, age and gender”. 

I believe that the emergence of new digital technologies, ranging from AI to 5G, offers a significant contribution to the fight against climate change.

This is a belief I have held for a long time, even when many were questioning why ITU should publish a report on ICTs and climate change some 15 years ago. ITU has never stopped advocating the role of ICTs in mitigating and adapting to climate change. And when I say ITU, I mean its 193 Member States but also – crucially – our membership of several hundred private sector companies.

ITU itself is a model of collaboration between the public and private sectors. Together with academia, civil society and several other regional and international bodies that are members of ITU, they work to:

As HRH The Prince of Wales told the G20 Summit on the eve of COP26: “the private sector holds the ultimate key to the solutions we seek” since it is increasingly eager to invest in the innovative technologies that will help create the necessary rapid transition to sustainability. He called for governments to work with the private sector to harmonise regulatory frameworks to encourage investment. I am pleased to say this is a core function of ITU’s work through the maintenance of the international treaty on the use of the radio spectrum and satellite orbits, the development of consensus-based international standards and the encouragement of an enabling environment.

An excellent example of the private sector’s commitment is the recent launch by GeSI of the ‘Digital with Purpose Movement’. This is already gaining traction inside and outside the tech sector, and more and more companies are signing its pledge, signalling the increasing commitment of the private sector to climate action.

Let me illustrate three concrete examples of impactful results that the multi-stakeholder collaboration in ITU delivers in practice: 

Firstly, a 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. The significant increase in the use of ICTs, especially during the pandemic, has had an impact on the ICT sector’s carbon footprint. In fact, this sector is one of the fastest growing greenhouse gas-emitting and energy-consuming sectors. The new standard’s recommended emission-reduction targets are the first targets specific to the ICT industry to be approved by the Science Based Target Initiative. It was developed in collaboration with several partners, including GeSI, and it will help the ICT sector reduce its growing environmental footprint and get on a decarbonization pathway towards net zero emissions.

Secondly, the last ITU World Radiocommunication Conference, just a few months before the start of the pandemic, adopted a resolution for early warning, disaster prediction, detection, mitigation and relief operations relating to emergencies and disasters – as well as a resolution for the protection of the sensitive space weather sensors used for global prediction and warnings. 

And thirdly, ITU strives to promote resilient digital infrastructure and expanding access to affordable and reliable connectivity to help vulnerable communities in some of the least well-connected countries build back better through initiatives such as Connect2Recover.

These are just a few examples of what ITU is doing to help mobilize digital innovation for climate action. ITU is very active in other key areas, from smart cities to e-waste. What these examples show is that meaningful partnership and collaboration are the foundation for accelerating progress on climate action. 

As the world needs more ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there must be greater recognition of what technology can provide. And we must ensure that we close the digital 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 electricity, which around 785 million people still don’t have.

We need to collaborate with urgency, to ensure that today’s digital transformation accelerates climate action, and to do so before it is too late. 

I look forward to continuing to strengthen ITU’s cooperation with GeSI and all partners, present and future, following what will be, let’s hope, a successful COP26 leading us to the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius and salvation for the world and humanity.

Thank you.