The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Thank you very much for joining our session. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever from the world you might be joining us. I am an online member, one of the organizers of this session together with my colleagues and I need a cheat sheet because there are many, the environment working group at IGF.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to our session today, the first ever environment main session of the IGF, we have an impressive list of speakers and moderators today, so I will not take a lot of time. I want to hear from all of them. But I would like to encourage all of you in the audience to make good use of the chat function to share your comments or to share any personal views you have, and please use the Q&A function to ask our panelists about anything that comes to your mind while they are speaking. I would like to give a point of order to our panelists, to please try and keep their interventions short and punchy and team to the five minutes allocated time. My colleague has a little bell that she will ring when you have one minute left to speak, and she will also ring the bell once you are out of your allocated time. Please be mindful. We are starting the session ten minutes after we planned. We had a delay. But we will try and make up for it and if needed we will run a little bit late, I hope you can all stay with us.
Without further ado, I introduce you to our host for this session, Mr. Krzysztof Szubert from the Republic of Poland. He is the President of the management board of the NCBR investment fund and is our plenipotentiary for our UN IGF 2021, senior level executive with 25 year record of leadership within the ICT industry, and experienced CEO of private companies and Secretary of State and Government plenipotentiary track record in national public administration. From 1998 until 2016 he was the President of the management board specializing in distribution of ICT solution in central and eastern European region. He was awarded man of the year prize and he was named one of the 100 central and Eastern Europe emerging technology stars, very impressive bio there. I will stop there because there are more accolades to sing your praises. Let me pass it to you to start our session and kick off the discussions.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Thank you for this invitation. Distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank our colleagues for inviting me to be the guest host for the session on environmental issues in the era of digital transformation, within the Opening Session we heard a lot of about investment funds which I like a lot and I can speak about that. But now let's focus on the environment side of our discussion today, as a former MAG member it gives me pleasure to be here with you today, as you are aware and was mentioned that environment topic has not been a key issue at IGF agenda so far. However, we should have a closer look at this matter, I think. This is because climate change and digital technologies are for sure two of the most defining features of our civilization for the future especially now during the pandemic time. I'm happy we will discuss these two complex issues today at our session. As you may remember, the next year's IGF host, to place the UN climate summit in December 2018, the entire region used to be one of the key symbols of the Polish mining industry for many years, but now transformed into the rapidly growing developing city with many companies focused on new technologies and innovations which is a great place to have a look at. The linkage between energy production and consumption as well as the usage of ICTs and its impact on the environment is very strong. We will come back to that later for sure. Now let's move to our discussion, just to briefly remind you that we have divided our session into three segments, which is digital technologies for sustainability, reducing climate impact of digitalization, the second one, and the third one, harnessing data for the environment, all three extremely interesting. We decided to divide the session into these three segments because they have different perspective. We have with us a number of distinguished panelists who would like to use this opportunity to discuss that from very different angles, starting from the positive side, let us focus on the initiatives and ways of overcoming climate change and building bridges between different sectors of the economy. This is a cross‑cutting issue. There are no simple answers. That is why I wish to give the floor now to Mr. Luis Neves, CEO of the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative. The floor is yours for the next 20 minutes and then we will be back to our mainstream again. Thank you.
>> LUIS NEVES: Thank you so much. I'm pleased to moderate this section on digital technologies for sustainability. My name is Luis Neves. I'm running the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative, business initiative dedicated to investigate the role of technology in relation to the broad sustainability which exist since 20 years and this has been our main purpose and our main work. I'm pleased to moderate this session, the panelist with Mr. Markus Wuest, the head of the Swiss office for environment, and Kara Hurst, Vice President, worldwide sustainability at Amazon. Thank you for joining this session. Before I hand over to you, let me say a few words about the work of JAC and what we have been investigating in relation to climate change or environment in relation to sustainability.
We have published last year two reports, the digital repurpose report and digital solutions for climate protection report. Both these reports present data on what technologies can do to slow down the effects of climate change. The first report presents COVID case studies of how the digital access to the Internet, the Internet of Things, digital reality and blockchain can support the sustainability development goals. The report findings show how technologies can lead to the advancement of 1.34 gigatons of CO2 emissions in 2030 against the business as usual. This can be possible through limit energy efficiency and intelligent transport systems. The second report focuses on what digital technologies can do to support the fulfillment of low and middle income countries indices. We have specific countries, China, India, South Africa and Vietnam and specify areas of those countries like power, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, the report shows if applied digital technologies can lead to a microsecurity which means 10 percent of the overall emissions of those countries. In both cases it is important to stress that digital technologies can mitigate climate change effects but these will be accompanied by more decisive actions. I'm not saying everything is good. I understand there are different views, different perspectives on this. What I would like to stress, in our organization we have been looking at this since 2007, we have issued different reports, different investigations, and the conclusion is that digital technologies will be fundamental to address climate change.
Anyway, let's listen to our panelists, and I would like to invite both of them to join us. I would like them to share their perspectives on how can existing and emerging digital technologies address climate change and foster change in sectors of the economy, manufacturing, trade, agri‑food, what conditions exist and what can be done to improve them.
>> MARKUS WUEST: Thank you for having me in this session. I'm replacing Karine Siegwart, but I hope I can entertain you with pictures. I hope you can see them all. Short confirmation, yes, you can see. I have links inside so if you want to fill out some of my report or pictures, please find the presentation, will provide it to you. This is our target image in the middle, we started to cover this issue with our office, environment Ministry, agency in Switzerland.
>> LUIS NEVES: Can you put this in presentation mode?
>> MARKUS WUEST: Yes, try. Better? We started approximately four years ago, when we saw this target image, the University of Zurich is a active research group dealing with the sustainability of computer science and the Internet. We discovered this work in 2017 and are still guided by this target picture.
ICT sector today produces even more CO2 emissions than the use of ICT has saved so far. Our goal must be to reverse this differential and use the new technologies in a way that they ultimately save more CO2 than they themselves consume for the operation. In the meantime many ideas emerged as to how this could be done, a collection of ideas and tips for municipalities and companies can be found on the Web site of the University of Zurich which we provide here the link.
Now if you want to dig deep into this, what can we do, we have to look at the value chain. You know this probably, there is a ‑‑ sorry, next picture ‑‑ there are a lot of companies that, IT companies included, that have committed themselves to get rid of CO2 impact. Companies usually stop introducing direct emissions in the middle of scope one, but there is a growing number that are extending this commitment to their suppliers and supply chains. Covering the effects on the customer side, however, is the most difficult part. But there are already approaches that I would like to show you a little bit. Simplify picture of the economic circle, this clearly shows that the consumptions cannot be automated at will. However, this purchase decision is in the middle of going to this scope 3. In particular, it's a important lever for incorporating the environmental aspect in general, not only CO2. Now some samples that I can show you in Switzerland, one idea is the integration of information, compensation possibilities, in the digital shops, in Switzerland such options are already available in many areas. This goes to private consumption, private consumers. Here is an example of a electricity provided in online detail from Switzerland. This is one of the best ways for suppliers or traders to influence their downstream impact to scope, to go to scope 3.
However, as public office, you have also these decisions, that is the main initiative that I would like to show you from Switzerland. We had so far public procurement law covered four purposes, economic, competition, transparency and even equal treatment, one of certainly, one idea that comes out of the SDGs, but now from 2021, we will start with this new criteria that really goes deep into the sustainability. This criterion should be built in effect not only in the public procurement law but into all markets and jobs. To this end, product data that is linked in these shops must be added with environmental impact data of products throughout a whole lifecycle. Therefore, we need to standardize the data on products and the environment, and this is really a big challenge ahead. We will probably hear a little more in the session today. But this effect to go to directly with environmental information to the shopping decisions made by public offices or private consumers or business to business approaches, this will help to green the overall economy with the help of digitalizations.
This is the main idea that I wanted to show you. Thank you very much. I hope I didn't exceed five minutes. If you want to see more, you can go deeper into the issues by the book or by block issues that I showed you here. Thank you.
>> LUIS NEVES: Thank you, Markus. It was comprehensive. I would like to hand over to Amazon.
>> KARA HURST: You mean me?
>> LUIS NEVES: I do apologize.
>> KARA HURST: No worries. Wonderful to be here with all of you today. Thank you for the invitation from the Internet Governance Forum and the opportunities to share what we are doing at Amazon. I lead the development and execution of our global sustainability work at Amazon and crosses all business areas globally, retail, cloud computing, operations and products. We are focused primarily on using Amazon scale as well as capabilities for speed and innovation to double down on sustainability and I'll share a little bit with you today around things we are working on specifically and broad goals that we have set.
One thing I want to get to quickly in the context of this conversation is a exciting project we have called the Amazon sustainability data initiative or we call it ASDI, which seeks to accelerate sustainability research and innovation by minimizing cost and time required to both acquire and analyze large sustainability data sets. This is a important part of our sustainability work to address climate change, enabling our core skills at Amazon and Amazon Web services business. We work with scientific organizations such as NOAA and NASA, the UK met office and Government of Queensland and we identify and host and deploy data sets off the AWS cloud, including weather observation, satellite data, forecast data, climate projection data, satellite imagery, air quality data, ocean forecasts. You get the picture. But on and on around these types of data sets that come together and have not yet been available in the cloud, many times and haven't been co‑located. We work with the group on earth observations, which offers research and organizations access to the AWS cloud to help countries realize the potential of earth observations for Sustainable Development. We support digital earth Africa which enables African nations to track changes across the continent. This is a unprecedented way of looking at detail making earth observation data more accessible. One of the core things we can help do is put these data sets together, they provide valuable insights around better decision‑making for prevention and planning, including things around flooding and droughts and soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest cover, land use, water availability and so forth.
We work with clean energy start‑ups in this space to produce realtime historical and forecast estimates of the available solar radiation resources around the globe which helps us scale up the deployment of renewable energy as efficiently as possible. That is one specific example of, in this way, how we are connecting data and technology and cloud computing services to promoting more accessible information around climate change effects.
To go back up to our macro level, we have committed at Amazon to the climate pledge which is our commitment to reach net zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris agreement, and we cofounded the pledge a year ago in September 2019, when global optimism which is led by Christiania, who many of you will know, who led the Paris agreement in 2015, and we are doing a number of things at the company to commit to being on this path to net zero carbon by 2040. One is we have committed to a hundred percent renewable energy by 2025, on a interim basis, to power all of our global operations with a hundred percent renewable energy.
We have ordered 100,000 fully electric delivery vehicles. We have invested a hundred million dollars into our fund on reforestation projects. We look at the potential of e‑commerce business that we are in, making significant investments to drive our carbon footprint to zero. We know shopping online is more carbon efficient than going to the store. We are trying to show which products and services can drive this. We have spent three years developing models and tools and metrics to measure our carbon footprint, but we are sharing the detailed analysis to see how shopping online and transportation that we are doubling down on electrifying, to generate less carbon than driving to a store. A single delivery van can take a hundred car trip round journeys off the road on average. We have a lot to share about our commitment to tackling climate change, ways we are making data more widely available. I'll end there. Thanks very much.
>> LUIS NEVES: Thank you, my apologies for my previous mistake. Thank you for letting us know about your amazing achievements from Amazon and the progress you have been making. Now it is time for Q&A. Timea, can you help me with questions.
>> There is a lot of discussion in the chat, but I haven't seen many questions asked. Please everyone, go to Q&A and ask your questions. I'd like to turn to our first discussant. You are one of the founders of the climate hub which is a platform to help businesses of all sizes to make pledges such as the one Kara mentioned from Amazon. Can you tell us about the initiative and how it links with the discussion?
>> Great to see initiatives like Amazon's. We are seeing so many businesses coming forward with a progressive, bold climate commitments. In order for companies such as Amazon to be able to address their full value chain, we need to address the SMEs in that value chain. One of the ways in which we are looking at doing is to mobilize and also support SMEs in the value chains of companies who have made strong climate commitments, to help them to align with their supply chain leader, so whether it's 2030 target for net zero or 2040 like the climate pledge, but certainly no later than 2050 which is what the science tells us is needed, SMEs can come on to the SME climate hub, make a commitment that is internationally recognized by the United Nations race to zero campaign and align with a net zero target. For those of you who don't know the race to zero campaign, there is parallel discussions happening now, within the United Nations framework convention on climate change, called the race to zero dialogues. Race to zero is all about bringing together all stakeholders whether they are governments, business, investors, universities, you name it, all around one goal which is really to make the Paris agreement ambition a reality and align stakeholders with net zero by 2050 at the latest targets.
On the SME climate hub a company with less than 500 employees could come to make a internationally recognized climate commitment, and also access tools and resources that will help that company to very practically curb its emissions, measure and track progress, and benefit from a large number of incentives, including recognition from its supply chain leaders, recognition by the United Nations, and we are working on financial and policy incentives as well. I encourage you all to have a look at the SME climate hub, whether you are a supply chain leader or a small business. There is definitely a place for you there to link up to the race to zero. Thanks so much.
>> LUIS NEVES: Thank you so much, Majda. I saw a question coming up from David Jensen. Maybe I can spell it for you, how can we get the environmental reform of all products on Amazon covered to consumers in a easy way, comparable way?
>> KARA HURST: We launched a program in the United States and North America and in Europe called climate pledge friendly. This makes it easier for customers to discover and shop for more sustainable products, we did this in a way that has a high bar. We used 18 different external certifications, they differ between the two geographies but we looked at third parties, groups like the certification bodies that are looking deeply at the ways in which products are made, and thinking more about the sustainabilities attributes making those visible to customers. We created one of our own called compact by design. Customers when they shop online will see these certifications, will see information about what is involved in these certifications, and these cross not only some Amazon products, but they are brands that people would recognize, and it's a exciting way to start to convey sustainability information more broadly to customers. These are, I think attributes that we look at package dimension, item weight, number of units, calculate the unit efficiency of a product, it's science driven and it's been externally verified and we have worked with partners as well, outside of Amazon, to verify this information and provide credibility behind it. We are excited about the beginning of this, that we can easily make it visible to customers, where they can shop for sustainabilities products. It's called climate pledge friendly. You can see the certifications, the different ways in which we are telling customers information. We will increase the number of products enrolled, and there has already been thousands that have applied for the certifications to be part of the program.
>> TIMEA: Luis, I'm afraid you are on mute.
>> LUIS NEVES: Thank you so much. Do we have any questions coming up?
>> Yes, we had one question, will be addressed in the next session, I think, regarding digital technologies environmental impact. Our next speakers, be prepared to answer that. There is one more question, I hope we can answer it quickly, does speaker think it is feasible for developing countries to build environmental impact checks into a procurement policy, does it need capacity development for both Government as well as for companies who bid for services, how does one prevent this from being a tick box exercise.
>> LUIS NEVES: Question for Markus?
>> MARKUS: It's in the beginning the check box exercise. In the end we should use AI assistance for buying, to help buying decisions to integrate all those other information enterprise. We need to get away from the price as unique identifier for your buying decision. And of course, the more data you have, this can become so complex, that we probably need more help from AI. This will probably automate a little bit our buying decisions, but can also help us to integrate environments, social and other issues into the choosing of your product that you want, on the front of this I'm sure.
>> LUIS NEVES: Do we have time for another question?
>> TIMEA: We should move on.
>> LUIS NEVES: Very good.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Thank you very much, Luis Neves for this important interesting discussion. It shows the use of the ICT and the digital technologies general can create synergies with other sectors of the economy, which is really great. What is more, they make a big impact on our sectors and contribute to create new value chains and business models which is really good to see and especially now.
Now let us move to the second area of interest today which is maybe somewhat negative effect of the digitalization, both on the climate, and how we could reduce this impact, first let us proceed by presenting the possible influence of digitalization process and ICT sector as a whole on the climate. The area of interest, the first one, so called direct carbon emissions coming from the manufacturing process, as well as further use of disposal of the equipment we use today on daily basis such as telephones, computers routers, elements of the networks, etcetera. The second one covers the indirect effects created by the usage of these devices, and other spheres of life, like transportation, logistics, business management, so we mention that already a little bit. The third one touches upon the psychological effect of our behaviors and preferences towards the usage of ICTs in our everyday life. So three very interesting angles to look at. Let us start the discussion around that topic at the moment, that part of our meeting. Let me present the panelists for this segment, first one Maya Ormazabal, head of environment and climate change at Telefonica. Second one, community engagement lead and board member at health club foundation, they both present the business and NGO perspective which is perfectly fitting our current discussion. If I may, I would like to begin our panel by addressing Miss Maya Ormazabal, share with us your experience and good practices from your company, from your life, particularly what can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of the digital technologies. Madam, the floor is yours. You have five to six minutes. Yes, please start. The floor is yours. Thank you.
>> MAYA ORMAZABAL: Thank you very much. Thanks for introducing me and for inviting Telefonica to share our experience on how we are trying to reduce impact of digitalization when we are providing solutions to our clients.
A quick view of what is Telefonica, we are a Telecom company based on Europe, but we have businesses also in Latin America. Our main businesses are based in Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK. In terms of sustainability strategy, we see this is a competitiveness issue and it's helping progress in the company, and we are confident that the transformation will lead to more sustainable world as has been shared in the first table, front table. We are both trying to reduce the impact of our operations, to deploy and to give solutions to our clients, to a low carbon economy, so that the solutions are based in a really green network.
Our climate goals are aligned with the 1.5‑degree scenario. We have committed to be 100 in 2030 though in our main markets we are already 100, consuming 100 renewable electricity now. We have been able to decouple energy efficiency from traffic growth. In our business it's important, our main consumption, main environmental impact comes from consumption. We have been able to decouple this. We are going to reduce by 90 percent between 2015 and 2025. All this is conducting us to reduce our emissions. We have committed ourselves to become net zero company in scope 1 and scope 2 before 2025, and also we are reducing our value chain emissions. It's relevant also. We have been able, we are going to reduce it almost 40 percent before 2025. All this to have green network, green operations, and also work so that we can help our clients to reduce their own emissions.
We have been committed, we have committed ourselves to reduce, help our clients to avoid five million tons of use in 20205 thanks to our services, telecommuting, for example. How we are going to achieve these targets, because they are challenging targets. To reduce CO2 emissions is relevant to transform our network thinking on efficiency all the time. We are deploying the more green and clean technologies like optical fiber and removing the old ones, promoting circular economy at the same time. We are implementing energy efficiency projects based on technical solutions that we have in place. Also because our main source of emissions come from the electricity consumption moving towards low use electricity is key issue. For that we have different strategies depending on the country, depending on the momentum. We have guarantee of origin but also PPA agreements we have signed in Spain, Brazil and Mexico and while improving, increasing self generation in our own facilities is another strategy. With green economy we can take all the potentiality to decarbonize all the sectors. What we have been doing until now has been helping us to issue two green bonds until now, we are part of the CDPA list and other things that I have mentioned before. But what we have is the targets but also the results. Our performance is quite good until now, as I have mentioned we have been able to reduce 50 percent our emissions globally, and to keep energy consumption always almost flat, until, instead of the traffic that is increasing year and year. This is all from our side. Thank you very much.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Great, thank you very much. Now I would like to hand over to Lily Botsyoe, great example of skilled IT expert and manager as well as representative of youth from the West Africa. She is currently working for the Heartland foundation and will share her experience in capacity‑building and communication around environmental sustainability and climate change, in particular what lessons can be learned from the perspective of various communities, based on already experience. The floor is yours for the next six minutes as well. Thank you.
>> LILY BOTSYOE: Great, hi, everyone. Good afternoon from Ghana, happy to meet everybody. Sorry my lights tripped before the meeting, but I'll try and be quick about this and then move to a interesting part where we talk about what young people around the world have rallied to work on regarding green and the Internet and that is what you see on my screen.
Let me start with the reason why I got interested with wanting to know the intersection of the Internet based on technologies environment. It goes to show that we are naturally becoming, technology is becoming manifestation of who we are. Who would have thought we would have effect of things done online felt off line. But this is how we have come, we are part of the system and not just working in isolation. I'll start with the work I'm doing, what we have seen in my subregion and in Ghana, which regards the impact of digital technologies and electronics and all that. I'm in one of the largest sites in Ghana and West Africa and is very popular and I'll share how is it giving me the interest in this and knowing how we can have sustainable use of technologies. It will interest you to know the issue is about looking at a blessing in disguise. There is import and heavy dismantling of technologies so people can find things they can sell to communities. You want to look at the dismantling of these things in these places. They dismantle it in different ways to fight iron and copper and plastics. In this place there are 20,000 people living in the place, and these people are feeding in the place, they are working in the place and making estimates for what has been done. You want to look at what is happening, why we are displaced and what has come to be. First, entry point of electronics into the country, we have collection, we have imports and we have people getting these into the country. But it got to a point where we see the impact. Some people go on about the convention, the Government has brought up to help the situation, but we look at what more can be done. From my point and speaking from the experience of communication of these villages we want to look at the recognition of multisector activities. Ghana, 95 percent of the work that is done with regards eWaste and recycling is informal. Once we look at the awareness and how to involve and provide information on what the processes are, that could lead to the better recycling of these things. Once you look at knowledge transfer, these are people who probably left school and working to make ends meet. But they know how to do it the right way. But when it comes to discussions they are sidelined, and they replace the path behind them and don't help them to great extent. Now we are seeing the impact has gone from being a individual approach to sovereign situation but we need more systematic reform. That is why the work we have done as young people for the program with people around the world is very ....
>> Seems like technical issues.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Yes, we lost Miss Lily Botsyoe.
>> That is unfortunate. While we wait, maybe we can go to the questions.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Yes, exactly. Quite a lot of interesting points brought by Miss Maya and Lily, hope she will be able to continue in a couple minutes. In the meantime we have a few minutes allocated for questions and answers. If there are any questions to both panelists or to the session in general, we can do it right now. If the moderator can help me to read them out or if you can write them out in the bottom in the Q&A option, not maybe in the chat, it will be easier to bring them and treat them. Hello?
>> Can you hear me clearly?
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Yes, now I can hear.
>> LILY BOTSYOE: Let me present briefly before the Internet trips again, what we worked on as young people, and what are the best recommendation we have regarding the green of the Internet. We discussed that we want to, we are calling on Government or different stakeholders, having messages to people, our first message is we should actively strive to mitigate the environmental impact of the Internet and ICTs, both public and private stakeholders should strengthen collaboration by following responsible good, consumption of data resources and promotion of innovation. Once we look at our second message, we ask that the promotion of access to the Internet and other ICT is sustainability. If we want to connect the next billion, we must do it in a eco friendly way, taking into consideration the environmental impact. We have to do this in a way that synchronizes every other thing that nature gives to us. In our course to connect people, our activity shouldn't negatively impact things. Policy recommendation is that the environmental impact of the ICT must be communicated in accessible and effective language. It is important to bring stakeholders to action as a country for change being based on scientific information. You want to have communication widespread, so everybody can understand, if you want to use video, or audio, but don't make it as dull, so they see a option to salvage the situation. You should let people know that this transform is a systematic approach of changing things, speak directly to stakeholders and respond to these recommendations, so people get to see how important it is to first know in our world the things that are happening and are able to contribute to doing it and to solving the situation.
This is something we have done for our perspectives and maybe when there are questions I can expand some more. I hope you didn't lose me this time around.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Yes, thank you again. Back to the questions, now I would like to ask our online moderator to check the questions we may have in the chat or Q&A box, and read them out so we will do our best to answer them right now. Do we have any questions?
>> Yes, I have something here. We have a few questions in the chat from a number of participants, I'll try and bundle them and put them to the both of you. Hopefully you can comment. We have a comment about 5G networks will they have a beneficial impact on reducing impact on data servers, etcetera. Another question from the youth IGF in Germany, apart from energy consumption devices electronic waste is the major problem for environment. How does Amazon and Telefonica plan to tackle the issue and how to limit waste or transition to more circular model of economy. Maya is the speaker for this segment. It is directed at you. There is a third question and last one, a misalignment is the concept of growth, profit driven market perceive people as consumers, more gadgets mean more depleted physical resources and more waste produced, is the private sector considering models to switch to the perception of owning a piece of equipment to framing it as a loan to future generations and the environment.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Interesting questions. We will cover some of them later on. I'm not sure if Miss Maya would like to take the question on 5G.
>> MAYA ORMAZABAL: Briefly, what are 5G, when we are deploying technology, we have to think about the overall picture, is it going to help our clients to reduce their emissions, is it going to allow us to reduce emissions of the electric sector or the transfer sector for sure. But we have to think on the environmental, eco design of this from the beginning. We can do that. We can do that. But we have to do it, so the play in it also removing and switching off old technologies and for instance Telefonica, we are employing 5G but at the same time we are going to switch off 3G and 2G.
When we are deploying, we have to think also at the same time, switching off and removing old technologies, because in the end, if you put on top, new technologies on the top, you are increasing the logistic consumption. Dealing with energy efficience, 5G is going to be more efficient in terms of petabyte, so in terms of traffic that we need as society. This delegation is about everything, and looking at the whole picture. We need to deploy in a efficient way. We need to, based on electricity in terms of the source and we need to switch off old technologies. We have to think about all of this, and also we need to innovate services to take all the potentiality of the digitalization. That is regarding 5G.
We have some studies of the efficiency of the 5G comparing to 4G and it's more efficient, and about 90 percent, if you deploy it in a very efficient way. We have some figures. Dealing with electronic equipment, and we have too many impacts in our sector, one is consumption and the other is electronic equipment. We have to promote reuse, more than recycling, because recycling is good but we have to promote reuse and eco design from the beginning. We are promoting that very much. The old equipment in our client's house we are using four million in one year, last year, and we have to do more. We have to encourage clients to be part of the solution. We have to innovate more, we have to think more in eco design, in using reusable plastic, in using recycling plastics and biodegradable material with low energy consumption, but also we have to involve our clients to think about these things. But there are many things going on in the market, if you can see, that informs our clients of a mobile device, is it more ecofriendly or is it less, and we have these kinds of things to engage our clients and consumers.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Thank you. Lily Botsyoe, would you like to comment on that, jumping into our discussion?
>> LILY BOTSYOE: I'll add something I learned in a earlier session today, not to say much on 5G because I don't have so much expertise. But if the solution is not sustainable ‑‑ we are going to believe all manufacturers are going to bring something onto the market provided they have a way to follow that is sustainable and going to yield results, if only that way, that is when we can see that the solution. Also there is probably ways to offer technologies and solutions to everybody around the world, and looking at the sustainable angle. I've seen that companies sometimes give us their footprint, they share their permission, maybe it's time to explain it more to all of us, that is a bit about communication that is important to us as young people and people who can get information to better what is happening. Even the solution is coming out and there is information that is understandable by all, not only by people who are technical and can understand. If you want to go sustainable and want efforts to be all encompassing, there should be a way that communication is clear enough and should be another way where we can have people running not because of scares but because they understand the issue as it is. They are running to help but they know inasmuch as this is happening, these are tools we have. There is empowerment to contribute, and there is clear understanding, and even in my part of the world, when we talk about 5G, we talk about 4G and having to stabilize. This is where we have to understand clearly. Once we are able to run the world on what is happening, eventually everybody gets to a point where it's sustainable enough and we don't have, in our quest to connect the next billion, we are having also effects in another way. We should make the system sustainable, make the solution smart.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Exactly. Sometimes I have the same feeling that we are discussing different technologies subjects in different size of bubbles and outside of those bubbles people are not so sure what we are talking about, and what the message we would like to bring.
Okay. Let me now just jump to the next part. Thank you very much for your comments and questions. They constitute the most valuable contribution to today's discussion. It's clear as you can see that the situation and our discussion is quite dynamic.
However, we must remember that our common goal is to make the best about to reduce the environmental impact of digitalization, and we should always keep in mind our actions and initiatives. Now the question is, is there something more that we can do to reduce the carbon footprint in our day‑to‑day habits, and the answer of course is yes, we can. There are two main issues which I would like to bring to the table. One is the utilization of electricity, from the renewable resources to charge the batteries of our electronic personal equipment, and in some extenses we can do it, and second, what was already mentioned is the sustainable usage of these devices by trying to use them as long as possible before they are disposed of. There is one more important point to bring to try to make sure that they are left formal recycling by handing them over to professionals and gathering electronic waste disposals, also important having in mind the sustainability and the environmental future.
These are just a few proposals, but they are pretty good I think way to start. We have one more segment ahead of us, actually the last one, but not least. Therefore, I would like to now hand over the floor to Mr. Michael Oghia, manager at the Global Forum for Media Development, but also a researcher and editor being the author of over 60 publications in that matter. He will focus on a interesting issue as well from my personal perspectives from data, data usage for the environment, in particular the collection of data including big data to monitor the emissions and identify climate risk in order to implement this knowledge in business decision and investment, which is key for the future, I think. I'm sure Michael Oghia will provide valuable expertise in that subject matter. So the floor is yours and for your segment of today's discussion you have as well approximately 20 minutes. So the floor is yours. Thank you.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much, Krzysztof. My name is Michael Oghia, and it's a pleasure for me to introduce both the session as well as our two speakers. I'm here representing the Internet rights and principles Coalition one of the IGF Dynamic Coalitions as GF is my day job. I've been a IT sustainability advocate working in this community since 2016. I open the segment by stressing that the progress we have made on the nexus of Internet Governance environmental sustainability is significant, although now seemingly validated by the MAG as a Internet Governance issue the relationship between the environment and Internet Governance has a rocky history, with some questioning the need to include such discussion with a Internet Governance Forum. As our previous speakers demonstrated, however, this is a topic inherently connected to Sustainable Development, human rights, international efforts to combat climate change such as COP and of course digital inclusion. Moreover, many of these discussions are happening in a siloed way, where there is little cross pollination of ideas and communities.
It's also important here within this section, sorry, within this session, to, it's important to recognize that there are three key components that the session is meant to address. One is the role of digital technologies, in creating a more sustainable world, while the second highlighted the other side of the coin, ensuring that ICT is themselves and the infrastructure that supports them are sustainable from their design and production to their emissions and lifecycle.
Now, this section will focus on the third critical element, the data that fuels these technologies and how such data can be harnessed to assess environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss, but also monitor the issues raised in sections 1 and 2, specifically it seeks to address how we can unlock relevant data held by public and private sector actors and collectively build a digital ecosystem of data, and analytics to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, climate risks in realtime, while informing climate safe investments and promoting a more sustainable digital economy through robust collaboration. I'm honored to introduce head of program at the UN environmental program, David Jensen, UN AP, who will present the work of UN AP's digital transformation task force and address how policymaking can benefit from big data to better understand the impacts of policy decisions on sustainability, and joining David is Pablo Hinojosa, strategic engagement director at Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, APNIC, one of the five regional Internet registries who will discuss how policymakers, businesses, Civil Society, and other actors can cooperate within the existing infrastructure of the IGF to harness the power of data in emerging technologies in the face of a climate crisis.
David, the floor is yours.
>> David, you are on mute.
>> DAVID JENSEN: Thank you for letting me know and thank you for the excellent introduction, Michael. Can everybody see my screen?
>> Yes, we can.
>> DAVID JENSEN: Wonderful. It's a great honor to be here. I'm absolutely thrilled that this is being addressed at the IGF in the main session, this is a huge precedent, and I'm pleased to be able to speak to this particular issue. The title of this five minute intervention is digitalizing environmental sustainability and climate action, how do we actually do it in practice.
The context for this session is straightforward. We have these two core trends sweeping the planet. On the one hand, we have a compounding set of environmental crises, be it the climate crisis, the nature crisis, the pollution crisis and business as usual is not working at the speed and scale necessary to solve these crises. We fundamentally need exponential change in the way we go about handling these problems.
On the other hand, we have digital technologies and digital transformation also sweeping the planet, and these are leading to a exponential increase in the availability of environment and climate data. We had unprecedented access to data now at a speed, scale and scope never before seen. We have data coming in from a number of sources, public sector, private sector, citizen science, academia, and a lot of the data is now spatial. We can see where it's coming from and the environmental context that is generating it. These are hugely important characteristics.
The question for this panel, how do we begin to embed environmental data and sustainability metrics into the digital economy, so that it helps to solve these three planetary crises in the next ten years. That's the problem statement we have to solve in this particular sector, and this is really what the IGF, we are hoping the IGF can help tackle.
The Internet is the most successful information architecture in human history. If we are looking at this broader question of environmental digitalization, digitalizing environmental sustain ability how do we harness the Internet as the economy moves from the analog state to the digital state. We need to think about how do we harness this digital network, how do we benefit from this digital ecosystem and contribute to the digital ecosystem, and how do we develop a multistakeholder governance model for this new economy, that is really learning from and leveraging the IGF and some of the processes the IGF put in place over a number of years.
There are these two key questions we have to answer. How can the IGF help harness Internet standards and digital infrastructure to drive this new era of digital environmental sustainability, and then how can the IGF contribute to the multistakeholder governance of this transition is it is inclusive, equitable and sustainable.
If we can bring the environment community together with the digital communities together, we have this historic opportunity now to hard code environmental sustainability norms and metrics into this new operating system of the digital economy. If we can do this, there are four key goals we need to accomplish together. The first is looking at the regulatory side of the digital economy, how do we enable regulators to transparently measure national and global progress against our environmental goals and commitments. How many do that in a rapid and automated way.
The second is looking at investors, how do we help investors access data and analytics on environmental climate risks and opportunities to inform investment decision‑making. The third is looking at the producers, production side of the economy, how can we enabling the measurement, the certification and sharing of data on the environmental performance of supply chains, of all products across our supply chains and across their value chains. How do we empower consumers to adopt sustainable lifestyles and behaviors through algorithms, through nudgers, through sharing and other digital techniques. How do we interconnect all of this through this digital ecosystem for the planet. Ultimately, that is simply a combination of data, infrastructure, analytics, insights and a decentralized governance framework. That has to then inform the core pillars of the economy and ensure the pillars have access to the data analytics that they need.
Finally, we stand at this pivotal moment in human history in terms of shaping the future governance of the Internet to help digitalize environmental sustainability. The first step forward is for the IGF to adopt environmental digital cooperation as a key topic, which it seems to be doing, we are also inside the environment program adopting digital transformation for environmental sustainability as a key priority over the next four years. We would like to work hand in hand with the IGF to address core topics. I'll finish on these topics.
The first, how do we build this decentralized network of environmental data and analytics as a digital public good. How can this environmental data be licensed, shared and quality controlled using the emerging API ecosystem, what are the business models we can use to pay for digital public goods, and how do we share revenues when digital public goods are monetized. What are the key principles and key safeguards needed for public/private collaboration. Finally how do we monitor and mitigate the environmental impacts of ICT in terms of energy and eWaste materials. This was the issue from the previous session.
I think the IGF is a tremendous opportunity for stakeholders in both these domains to connect, collaborate, combine efforts, to harness data and digital transformation to save the planet and hope we can find a path to work on this together. Thank you very much.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you very much, David. Pablo, if you are ready, over to you.
>> PABLO HINOJOSA: Good morning from Australia. It's 3:00 a.m. here, so I hope I can make some sense. The first thing I want to say is very warm welcome to you, David, to the IGF. I think the IGF can help you with this challenge, that you well explained. It is an honor for me to be here at this virtual IGF in 2020, which has four main themes, data, trust, inclusion and for the first time ever in 15 years environment.
This is a wonderful opportunity especially for the Internet technical community to take positive action and participate in this theme to improve the health of the planet. Historically the organizations like mine, like APNIC were the ones originally doing Internet Governance consisting in coordinating technical elements of the Internet such as IP addresses and DNS.
In the early days of the IGF it was argued that Internet Governance was only about how this so called critical Internet resources should be managed. APNIC participated in the discussions and supported multistakeholder model defending a qualitative approach where the technical community together with other stakeholders could agree on Internet Governance decisions.
Now I want to share a reflection, the efforts required to deploy the Internet around the world. Still incomplete, but covering almost every corner and more than half of the world's population, the point I want to make is that these efforts have been as challenging as those required to solve collective action problems for its governance.
The cooperative model and the way of organizations that need to keep a single global open stable and secure Internet, this has not been a small undertaking, and the IGF has played an important role in building these multistakeholder model. Over the years, Internet Governance has grown in terms of scope and complexity, David just talked about digital transformation, needed to understand the problem of climate change.
It's estimated that there is close to a 68 percent data gap needed to measure progress on 93 key environmental, indicators to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. We need to build a data crunching platform to help save the planet to achieve this. Here is where we want to make a concrete proposal which actually we discussed with David recently in a workshop at the Asia Pacific regional IGF meeting.
There is much to say about energy consumption of the ICT sector, eWaste is a big problem. We don't think IGF would help solve 5G carbon impact but the IGF can support digital transformation, the one that David talked about through data governance and collective action. Take this challenge, and I'm trying to translate David's concepts into the IGF, David talked about three elements of digital network which is Internet and information ecosystem which is a collaborative effort between the Internet environmental communities, and a governance model which the IGF is ideally suited to help develop. This is all that it takes.
I cannot think of a better place than the IGF for Government officials, international and regional organizations, data scientists, space agencies, satellite companies, geospatial businesses, cloud computing platforms, Internet service providers, climate change organizations, science associations and Civil Society groups, to meet and work together in developing environmental data governance framework.
It is for this reason that we at APNIC support a initiative submitted to the IGF MAG to start the best practices following the governance of environmental data. This initiative is a opportunity for IGF to shed light on its Government experience and apply it Government environmental data. This is a collaborative opportunity where IGF can demonstrate one more time how it can be used for good, this time for the good of the planet.
I trust MAG will support this proposal for the Internet Governance environmental communities to use the IGF for what is best bringing people together. You ask of course, community members, to join these Best Practices Forum with the IGF, to draft this digital transformation. I will leave it there and thank you so much.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much, Pablo, and thank you for being up so late, up so early, however you want to say it. We appreciate you being here and appreciate all the work that you did to make sure that the session is included in the AP IGF as well.
Having said that, are there any questions for David and Pablo that we could address that are specifically related to this section? Let me check in the Q&A. There is a couple in the Q&A.
Tackling the climate crisis requires systemic changes which need to start yesterday. What is the system component that ICTs are targeting towards this direction? David, would you like to take that? Or would you be able to?
>> DAVID JENSEN: I'm not sure I fully, I'm wondering if Luis might want to tackle this one from Jessie, in particular this is exactly what Jessie has been looking at and they have a new report on this particular issue. I'm wondering if Luis might want to step in and answer this one.
From my side, we have to start fundamentally by bringing transparency to the current progress on where the emissions are coming from, and basically how close are we and how close are governments and companies on towards their targets. It fundamentally begins with that transparency element. That is a question of collecting sufficient amount of data and publishing that data and making sure that the performance of individual companies and individual products, of individual governments, is fully transparent. That is certainly the first step from my side. But I don't think I'm informed enough to know specifically how ICT companies are doing the targeting. Maybe Luis can step in for that one.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Luis, if you are still available, if you would like to come in, please do. I would like to apologize quickly to Markus who is supposed to be leading this part of the section, so Markus, please at any point, please come in as well if you would like to answer, if you would like to facilitate, be my guest.
>> Thank you for your presentations. I'm convinced we will be able to jump forward the perspectives in improving the digitization of the environment, and use digitization in the end in a way that we will see real progress in achieving environmental goal more in digitalization direct. David showed us a clear way, and focus on this issue. Very important also I think the public interest in these tools and standards that we need to go there is really big, and they should not leave this critical Internet resources to large private actors only. IGF and other international actors like climate secretary and whatever can play a important role here. So they also need to take into account the possibilities of digitization, of course. So let's go and use all these networks to improve our environment. Thank you very much.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Markus. We have time for questions. There is a excellent question from Mark, and it's speaking to something that's become close to my heart, can public sector administration and large corporate enterprises do more through their procurement to drive reduction of environmental impacts of digital technologies. This is separate from climate data per se but I do think, this very much aligns with that third point that you made, David, about how if we are looking at supply chains, looking at transparency, procurement involves a big aspect of that, in that process.
Would you, do you feel comfortable speaking about procurement or about what we can do as well in terms of facilitating that?
>> DAVID JENSEN: As you say in many companies Government procurement private sector procurement is more in terms of impact than consumers, can have a transformative shift in driving the adoption, technology is really driving demand. Absolutely, procurement policy is a fundamental anchor upon which this digital transformation has to rest absolutely. But of course that depends fundamentally on getting the metrics coming out of the supply chains, so procurement decisions can be made, and as Kara mentioned getting access to the certifications and making sense of those certifications so you can sustainably secure a product is difficult. We need global standards on how to calculate these environment carbon footprints, how to communicate them, how to embed them into digital product passports, and how to connect that into procurement systems and procurement policies so we can have a mutually reinforcing cycle.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much, David. Pablo or Markus, were you raising your hand, Markus?
>> Markus: Just supporting David 100 percent. Thank you. (chuckles).
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Good, now we can see you. Pablo, I don't know if you have anything to add about procurement per se. You are more than welcome to, especially as it relates to what the technical community can do. I will keep that open for you, if you would like to address procurement. I'd like to ask you a specific question, that is in terms of the IGF as a multistakeholder community, in addition to potentially joining the BPF, do you have any other concrete suggestions for what we as a community can do to support this topic and to support like I said cross sectorial pollination of ideas and discussions and knowledge, essentially.
>> PABLO HINOJOSA: I think what we have here is an opportunity to make a positive contribution to something that is very much needed, and the IGF has a community with expertise and a track record of aggregating different issues from different perspectives, issues such as procurement, many others. So in order to develop this agenda of environment within the IGF, we need to think about whether we would like it to be in a general problem statement, or whether we can contribute with concrete actions towards a goal, and I think David's goal of the data ecosystem for the planet is a very relevant one, where the Internet technical community, among many other stakeholders have something to contribute particularly in the context of the IGF. It is about fostering collective action in support of the digital ecosystem for the planet.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. I want to thank you and David very much for your interventions, Markus, as well for you for joining this part of the discussion. To wrap this section up before I give it back to Krzysztof, I want to say two things. One is that it's to me, I know I'm a bit biased in this, but it seems to me that it's incredibly clear that there is space for environmental subjects within our community, and there is a lot more work we need to do in terms of connecting the people that may not have otherwise been involved in these discussions.
If I can kind of close by saying on a very personal note, we have been working so, so hard over the past many many years to bring this topic to the discussion, it's such, I can't explain in words how amazing it is to see this happening, and it really fills me with a lot of joy and enthusiasm to continue pushing this forward.
So thank you, everyone, who made this happen. And with that, Krzysztof, I'm happy to give the floor back to you. Thank you very much.
>> KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT: Yes, thank you very much, Michael Oghia for your valuable contribution as well as to other panelists. It is great discussion. It shows both the public and private sector can work together in collecting confusing data in order to build a comprehensive digital ecosystem.
On a personal note if I may briefly share with you and my own experience as a policymaker in my capacity as deputy Minister for digital affairs in Poland a few years back, data sharing policies were then, 2016‑17, starting to hit the tables of the senior officials in the EU and Poland has for a long time understood the importance of sharing accessing and using data, and at that time my Government was the leader of so‑called like minded group of countries in the EU, it was approximately 16, 17 countries, and indicated the discussion formalized a paper on free flow of data which was later on the backbone of the biggest European digital strategy which was Digital Single Market strategy just to make comment of that. Our efforts brought important policies about in the EU, and I'm personally happy to see a follow up to those policies in a number of European Commissions' initiatives that we are now, that are now taking place.
With this in mind, I want to share with you that on the 11th November, so in a couple of days, 11 November, 2020, the European Commission is planning to announce a legislative proposal for the data governance act. This document aims to create the framework for the development of a secure data sharing infrastructure. It will also generate the mechanism and requirements in order to facilitate the provision of data sharing services as well as access to public sector data within the EU.
This is just one of the examples of addressing this issue, but the very concrete and transparent one. Before I wrap up the session, I try a little bit to summarize our today's discussion on the environmental issues with relation to digitalization.
We tried to address the impact of existing and emerging digital technologies on climate change from very different perspectives. In this regard we have presented the current initiatives and ways of improving them. Next we have analyzed possible solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of digital technologies and shown some lessons learned from different communities, which is great.
Then we have given you some hints on how every one of us can contribute in our everyday life, and finally we have touched open data governance, especially big data, to help us monitor the emission of greenhouse gases and climate risk which is extremely important.
Having this in mind, I wish to recall the G20 declaration from the last year, it recognized that improving resource efficiency through policies and approaches such as circular economy, sustainable materials management, the three Rs which is reduce, reuse, recycle, contribute to the SDGs.
It also stressed importance of energy transmission that realize the three E plus S standard which is energy, security, economic efficiency, environment and safety, in order to transform our energy systems into affordable, reliable, sustainable and low emission systems as soon as possible.
This declaration has also a role for data for the development, therefore we should take a closer look at the environment data as well.
For our last activity today during this session, we have prepared for you a small surprise, so called, which is a audience poll. So in a minute, we will display for you the proposed key take‑aways from each of the session segments, asking for your vote on whether you agree with them. This poll is for sure anonymous. It will help us gather your views and put them forward for future discussions at the IGF level, which is a great contribution from the audience as well. So please express your opinions as soon as the poll will show up on your screens. And thank you very much in advance for your feedback.
I will leave it for a moment. So we have the poll right now. So we can spend a few moments and then vote.
Okay. I've done the same. We will see in a minute, hopefully the results from later on to be published on the IGF Web site. So just to move a little bit into the closing area, so ladies and gentlemen, actually, we have reached the end of our session at this time. On behalf of myself and my other colleagues, organizers, moderators, speakers, panelists, who have engaged themselves in preparing this session, I wish to express my deepest thanks for your active attendance as well. This is extremely valuable for us.
Finally, I would like to kindly invite all of you next year for the IGF 2021, hopefully we will meet there in person, so that you will have the opportunity to experience the traditional Polish hospitality as well as the taste of the specialties of cuisine and learn about the tourist attraction of the region, so actually prepared a lot of the ideas for this year, but as you may know, we had to move it to the next year, so hopefully in December 2021 we will meet in Poland. So thank you again for your time and see you all again next year in Poland.
>> Thank you for the great moderation and to our colleagues for their insights, and again to my MAG colleagues for the amazing help putting this session together, everybody, the Secretariat and to our Chair who has been pushing hard for us to have environment on the table. I want to echo one of the take‑aways for today that this coming year from Michael's session with David and Pablo that we cannot solve the climate crisis at the IGF. But I'm confident that we cannot solve the climate crisis without the IGF. Let's carry on the discussions and see you all in Katowice, Poland next year.
>> See you.
>> Thank you.