Global Leaders Endorse Digital Sustainability at COP29
Digital technologies have become integral to our daily lives, offering unprecedented opportunities for innovation and efficiency.
However, their rapid proliferation has also led to significant environmental challenges, including increased energy consumption and electronic waste.
Addressing these issues requires a concerted effort to promote digital sustainability—a commitment to reducing the environmental impact of digital activities.
Understanding Digital Sustainability
As we talk about in regular webinars, there are two sides to digital sustainability.
On one side there are the amazing things digital technologies are doing to make our planet a better place for everyone.
On the flip-side, digital sustainability also involves applying sustainability thinking to our technology use, implementing practices that minimise the ecological footprint of digital technologies.
Go Deeper – What is Digital Sustainability?
Pick one of our regular interactive webinars to learn about both sides of digital sustainability. Learn more and register here…
The Role of Digital Technologies in Climate Action
The act highlights the potential of digital tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance climate resilience, while also acknowledging the environmental costs associated with digital infrastructure, such as the energy demands of data centres and the carbon footprint of manufacturing processes.
The goal is to balance technological advancement with environmental stewardship, ensuring that digital progress does not come at the expense of the planet.
The 8 Common Objectives of the Green Digital Action Declaration
Leveraging Digital Technologies and Tools for Climate Action: Encourage the development and adoption of sustainable digital technologies to accelerate GHG emissions abatement, reductions, and removal and energy efficiency across sectors and to support climate-resilient communities, including through the UNFCCC Technology Mechanism. Additionally, enhance climate monitoring and forecasting and strengthen emergency response and preparedness capabilities through the broader use of digital technologies, including mobile early warning systems. Encourage improvement of digital technologies for energy modelling and forecasting to make grids more resilient to climate change’s impacts and support clean energy initiatives that are adopting digital solutions.
Building Resilient Digital Infrastructure: Emphasise the importance of designing digital infrastructure resilient to climate change impacts, ensuring the continued functionality of critical digital systems in adverse conditions.
Mitigating Digitalisation’s Climate Impact: Develop policies and technical advancements to contribute to achieving net zero emissions and minimize the resource intensity of digital technologies. This includes powering digital infrastructure with clean energy, promoting energy-efficient practices, reducing emissions embedded in digital infrastructure and supply chains, extending product lifecycles, and improving recycling and e-waste management systems. It also includes establishing metrics and indicators to measure climate impacts of ICTs and to monitor the impact of digital actions on climate.
Promoting Digital Inclusion and Literacy: Promote the accessibility of digital technologies for climate action to developing countries, including Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. This involves supporting digital skills, digital literacy and capacity-building initiatives, especially for young people and women. Foster local digital ecosystems by providing support and resources for startups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and research institutions working on sustainable digital solutions.
Data-driven decision-making: Deploy assessment methodologies to estimate the net climate impact of green digital solutions, implement effective systems to accurately track and standardise climate-related data and energy usage and effectively monitor regulatory adherence and data quality and integrity.
Fostering Sustainable Innovation: Mobilise existing climate funds and invest across all channels in innovation, research and development and implementation of environmentally sustainable digital technologies and resilient infrastructure, encouraging collaboration across sectors to integrate climate considerations early in and throughout the technological development process. Recognise the importance of protecting intellectual property rights to incentivise innovation while also enhancing cooperative action to facilitate the widespread adoption of digital and green technologies. Promote policies that account for the protection of intellectual property and the need for open access to technologies that contribute to global climate goals.
Encouraging Sustainable Consumer Practices: Promote awareness and education on sustainable digital consumption and practices among consumers.
Facilitating the Sharing of Best Practices: Leverage existing mechanisms and develop and implement new mechanisms that facilitate the sharing of best practices, including both good policy practices and effective technology applications, among countries in using digital technologies to reduce GHG emissions and enhance adaptation and resilience. By creating platforms for knowledge exchange and fostering international collaboration, we can ensure that successful initiatives, both in policy and technology, are replicated and adapted to diverse contexts, thereby accelerating global progress toward achieving climate and environmental goals.
Digital Carbon Online is dedicated to helping organisations understand and reduce the environmental impact of their digital presence.
By providing tools to assess and mitigate the carbon footprint of websites and digital services, Digital Carbon Online empowers businesses to contribute to a more sustainable internet while addressing part of their Scope 3 emissions.
Practical Steps for Digital Sustainability
Organisations can take several actionable steps to enhance digital sustainability:
Assess Digital Carbon Footprint: Utilise tools to measure the carbon emissions associated with digital activities, including website carbon footprints, email campaigns, IT infrastructure and data storage. Understanding the current impact is the first step toward meaningful reduction.
Optimise Digital Infrastructure: Implement energy-efficient servers and data centres, and consider cloud services that prioritise sustainability. Regularly update and maintain hardware to ensure optimal performance with minimal energy consumption.
Promote Sustainable Digital Practices: Encourage responsible digital behaviour among employees and users, such as reducing unnecessary data storage, optimising images and videos for web use, and minimising the use of energy-intensive applications.
Engage in Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and update digital sustainability strategies to adapt to technological advancements and emerging best practices. Engage with industry initiatives and collaborate with other organizations to share knowledge and resources.
Start tackling your digital carbon footprints today.
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