Session
Dynamic Coalition on Internet & Jobs
Debate - Auditorium - 90 Min
We are living in the era when the Internet, one of the sources to connect people globally, is just a few steps away from becoming a basic human necessity. We are all aware of the fact that a safe environment is an already basic human right. In October 2021, the UNHRC declared that having a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right. We believe the Internet will soon become a fundamental human right with the escalation of digitalisation and a portion of the world population not having access to the Internet. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, internet consumption was boosted across different sections, including household activities. But the, consumption should have a threshold because of tangible cons: accessing the Internet at the cost of things like health and the environment. To name a few examples, a short email sent from laptop to laptop on an average generates 0.3g CO2e, a simple google search produces 0.5g CO2e, and a single text message generates 0.8g CO2e. Individual actions can make a huge difference. As we cannot escape the reality of growing digitalisation and climate, there is a need to create new norms with ways to find How to lead a lower-carbon lifestyle with making the requisite effective use of the Internet responsibly. This talk must have started earlier, but better late than never. We are going to unveil the ' Internet Etiquette' at this session, which should become the guidance document on how to use internet responsibly.
Two panellists may join online but the rest will be offline and onsite. We will use Zoom as we used in the 2021 IGF.
Prof. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, DC - Jobs - Civil Society - Moderator - India Ms. Smriti Lohia - World Intellectual Foundation - CIVIL Society - India
1. Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Executive Chairman, World Intellectual Foundation & Chair - DC- Jobs - Civil Society - Moderator - India 2. Erik Solheim, President Green Belt and Road Development Institute 6th Executive Director UN Environment Former Minister of Environment and International Development Norway 3. Gunjan Sinha, MetricStream , Private Sector - USA 4. Dr. Osama El. Hassan - Dubai Health Authority, Government - UAE 5. Dr. Pooran Chandra Pandey, International Visiting Fellow, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, Minsitry of Foreign Affairs(ROC), Taipei, Taiwan. 5. Ms. Smriti Lohia, World Intellectual Foundation - Civil Society- India
Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta
Gunjan Sinha
Smriti Lohia
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
12. Responsible Production and Consumption
Targets: SDG 7. Affordable and Clean Energy SDG 12. Responsible production and Responsible Consumption As mentioned above our digital footprint has a direct impact on the environment through carbon emissions. We need to on one side power the data centres with clean and green energy, and on the other side, ensure responsible consumption of the internet and associated activities. This is an important topic and not only we should talk about it, but we must also ensure that there is proper guidance on DOs & Don'ts. This session will be about interlinking the two goals
Report
Key takeaways: 1. Focus on Decentralization, Localization, and Governance: Technologies of the future are going to have a significant intersection of the Internet and ESG principles. The next generation of social media is going to be more decentralized, providing more empowerment and local governance. The Federated model of the Internet creates a lower digital footprint by building an internet that is more scalable and conscious in its power and
Action items: 1. Quantify the carbon footprint of the digital activities, create labels of the matrix of usages like that of the food and aviation industry, and embed the standards in the platforms / Internet Protocol. Like, emails could carry an impact on the environment for the carbon emissions. Currently, mobiles have systems to show us screen time and have parental controls, a similar mechanism could be initiated for the carbon footprint of o
Responsible Internet Usage
Session Report
Session: Responsible Internet Usage
Date: December 2nd 2022
Time: 10:45- 12:15 UTC+3
Theme: Enabling Safety, Security, and Accountability
At Banquet Hall A
Session Chair: Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Chairman- Dynamic Coalition on Internet & Jobs, Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
Rapporteur: Ms. Smriti Lohia
The Session started with opening remarks from Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Chairman of Dynamic Coalition on Internet & Jobs, Internet Governance Forum (IGF). He released the report on ‘Responsible Internet Usage’. He discussed how digitalization is becoming an integral part of our lives and how it impacts the environment. Dr. Gupta gave a very different perspective on understanding the topic. If we take an average lifespan of 70 years and a human sleep around eight hours a day, we probably sleep 24 years in our life. And if we estimate 9 hours of time on the web per person, we spend almost 21 years of our life on the internet. That means the majority of our time. We are going to be on the net in terms of our office workers and that will definitely have an impact on the carbon footprint.
Mr. Gunjan Sinha, Executive Chairman of MetricStream and a tech pioneer, has been closely involved with the Internet since the early 90s when the Internet was still a research network. The Internet has become foundational to our lives, society, and nations globally. He talked about the intersection of the internet and ESG principles. The environmental world focuses on the carbon side; the social focus is on the digital divide. The Environmental, Social, and Governance of the Internet need to be considered very carefully at the policy and individual levels. According to him, social media will be more decentralized in the next generation, and when you decentralize the internet, it creates more empowerment and more local. So we have to get towards modus decentralization, more localization, and more governance at the local levels, even though the internet assumes to be a global network. As we get to a Federated model, we will create a lower digital footprint.
We have to label our digital activity properly. Labeling standards must be used in the digital world; for example, label at the bottom of an email about its negative impact. As we label, it starts to create awareness which leads to the right change of behaviour which then leads to a more ESG- centric internet, which has been missing in our overall architecture of the Internet of the future. It requires governments to come together. It also requires standard bodies to come together to create labeling standards.
Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio, Chief Information Officer at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) talked about the project of Digital Identity. It was a move towards digital transformation. Now the system is based on new technologies such as biometrics and blockchain and how to provide assurance about these technologies’ reliance on governing bodies and other stakeholders.
He emphasized a lot needs to be done to make sure that the use of technology can be done in an accountable manner to provide assurance and whether and how the use of technology is being done by taking into consideration all the implications of technologies, whether it's about environmental sustainability, social responsibility, energy consumption and so forth. Governments, international organizations, the private sector, and professional associations should work together and start creating a set of standards in order to provide assurance and reliance on the responsible use of these technologies.
Mr. Erik Solheim, Former Environment and Development Minister of Norway, and former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), touched upon the IT industry’s responsibility for solving the global environmental crisis. The industry should aim to go net zero, sourcing its data centers from renewable energies and buying carbon credits for emissions that cannot be abated. It should use its enormous outreach on various social media platforms to facilitate a broad dialogue on how to solve environmental problems.
Dr. Pooran Chandra Pandey, a senior visiting fellow at The Institute for Democracy in Taipei, gave a brief on the kind of scale and impact of carbon emissions that we are creating by doing very small things, like email, but that matters a lot. The serious problem with any technology is when we go beyond and begin to use it without really knowing the consequences that we will have on health, climate, and society. The kind of activities we undertake without knowing how it impacts the environment. Therefore, knowledge is important because most of us don't know the kind of impact of 1 MB of an email and the data created in its life cycle. On aggregate, an individual is contributing more than 300 million tons of CO₂ annually, from sending emails to text to playing games online and others which we are not aware of in terms of the negative impact we are creating for the people around us and also on the environment which is an intrinsic part of life.
There are a few things that need to be considered: We have to educate children from the school itself about these issues; companies that are producing technology need to be more transparent in terms of their sustainability report, the value they are creating not by selling technology but also being aware how technology affects people in the state of wellbeing.
Osama El Hassan, a senior digital health expert on Smart Health at the Dubai health authority, talked about the excessive use of the internet and its association with people’s health. The consequences of excessive of the internet are both physical as well as psychological, which can cause damage to the economy as well. This can also affect cognitive abilities. The key health issues that are clearly associated with excessive internet use is the high blood pressure and obesity; sitting for so long, or focusing on internet devices for long, especially with people who are addicted to gaming, will impact their blood pressure. On the psychological side, anxiety is becoming more and more prevalent, especially with adolescents that now have more difficulties interacting with the real world. This area needs much consideration, and we must have many governance issues.
We also need to have legal governance around misbehavior, bullying, or shaming. This could be at local, regional, and country levels. We need a framework to ensure that these interactions will not have a psychological impact on users.
Smriti Lohia, the co-author of the Responsible Internet Usage paper, talked about how the internet will soon become a basic human necessity and why it is now important to understand responsible usage of the Internet. People need to start focusing on their digital carbon footprint. She emphasized on while using the internet; we need to consider what's necessary and what's not necessary; for what purposes we are using the internet; we need to see what platforms we are using; what kind of content we are accessing. So, we need to consider our responsibility towards the internet at very minute levels.
The session ended with a vote of thanks from the chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pratap Gupta, and with a promise to come out with more reports on the labeling of our digital activities and to create mass awareness about the carbon impact of our digital footprint and work towards making people responsible on internet usage.
To learn more about our work, visit: https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/dynamic-coalition-on-internet-jo…