ITU Telecom World 2009 In Review 2009 Geneva 5-9 October The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is also committed to green growth, said its Director General Edouard Dayan. Worldwide, the postal sector delivers more than 430 billion letters and six billion parcels each year. In taking up the chal-lenge of green growth, businesses can rethink their logistics chains and plan long-term measures to save energy. “We are measuring levels of greenhouse-gas emissions, in order to contribute to efforts to reduce them,” Mr Dayan said. He went on to outline UPU’s plan to help build a global physical, electronic and financial transmission network. “This should contribute to business develop-ment, and solve, for instance the problem of migrant workers sending money to their families,” Mr Dayan explained. He added that one of the key issues was the question of standards, whose adoption allows economies of scale and a cut in the cost of ICT. An example is UPU’s Global Monitoring System project that was launched in August 2009. It involves the insertion of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags into letters to measure the time taken to deliver mail between the 21 countries participat-ing in the project. Ten years ago, the cost per transponder was considered too high at USD 23. “With international standards, we are now able to offer access to that technology at the much more affordable price of USD 0.30,” Mr Dayan stated. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecom-munications Organisation (CTO), stressed the crucial role of the World Meteo-rological Organization (WMO) in combating climate change. Speaking of the tsunami that hit Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga on 29 September 2009, Mr Spio-Garbrah outlined the importance of the Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations. On the basis of this Convention, CTO, ITU and their partners are organizing workshops on the role of ICT in managing disasters. This is an issue that affects all countries, Mr Spio-Garbrah stressed, adding that “CTO is also involved in capacity building for disaster management”. Natural disasters have a considerable impact on lives, livelihoods and prop-erty. Just before the opening of ITU TELECOM WORLD 2009, the world wit- 28 VVIPS and Ministerial Insight