IGF 2020 – Day 11 – WS266 Sustainable #netgov By Design: Environment & Human Rights

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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>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. We are waiting a few minutes because one of our speakers is having trouble joining. As soon as she joins, we'll get started.

Thank you for your patience.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Hi, everyone. I don't know who our host is. Could you let us know? Who is our host?

>> Hello. I'm here.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Hi. What's your name?

>> Claudia.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much. We also have one other individual who should be joining as a panelist soon, hopefully soon. His name is Wizad. Please promote him to a panelist if not already. Thank you very much, Claudia.

So thank you, everyone, for joining. Pia, you are just in time. Do not stress at all. I told everybody. Everybody knows people are having ‑‑ especially new people are having trouble joining for the first time. Do not worry at all.

So I think we can go ahead and get started. Give me a moment, let me pull up my notes.

So the very first thing I would like to do before I go into my welcoming ‑‑ and, Claudia, if you don't mind, please do promote everyone who is in the room to a panelist because this is a workshop. I fully intend for everybody to participate here if you would like to, of course. This is not a webinar. I will make that point again.

>> Sure.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much, Claudia. Hold on a second. I realized my connection is not in my PC, my Mac. Now you should be able to hear me better.

Wonderful. If there is no further ado, I would like to get started.

Welcome, everyone, to our workshop. Thanks for joining us. My name is Michael Oghia. In the context of this session, the hat I'm wearing is that of a steering committee member of the internet rights and principles coalition, one of the IGF's 23 active coalitions. They have been prioritizing the subject in line with article four of the charter regarding the right to development.

This session seeks to build on events in Paris in 2018 as well as Berlin last year and others where we have demonstrated how internet governance, environmental sustainability and human rights are interconnected. This workshop also builds on our DC session held on 6 November this year, so about ten days ago, along with a session that the association for progressive communications held last week.

So why this topic now? The urgency surrounding this area now has never been greater. Internet dependent technologies are an integral part of our daily lives and more so considering the pandemic. Yet ICTs, information and communications technologies, have a direct impact on the physical environments locally, regionally and internationally. While these technologies play a central role in global efforts to find solutions to tackle the climate crisis and promote environmental protection as well as sustainable development the growing demands of an interconnected society are contributing to unprecedented levels of energy consumption, conflict mineral mining, E‑waste and the dumping in the global south as well as negative effects on vulnerable natural landscapes, communities, human rights and more.

One of our principle arguments is that much of these problems, many of these problems rather stem from a lack of consideration of sustainability in the design of ICTs. We now face a situation where we need to create sustainable technology for tomorrow but are still working with the unsustainable business model's lack of long‑term holistic design thinking and inadequate policy frameworks that have essentially defined technology, ICTs for the past 20, 30 years if not longer.

This is further exacerbated by the siloed nature of communities, discussions, networks and solutions seeking to address the topic. Many organizations, researchers, governments, companies and more are working to address some aspect of technological sustainability which is great. However, they often do not communicate across sectoral partitions and often don't know others working on the topic exist. They don't know others are out there working on the same topic.

Now, a lack of a holistic approach to the topic is problematic for myriad reasons, not least because of three critical elements. One, there is concern that there are so many ‑‑ there is concern that there are so many piecemeal approaches to the topic the impact will be limited due to no clear consensus as to how to move forward or measure process as it relates to the sector as a whole. Number two and closely connected to this is that the extremely limited funding and resources available that is needed will not be adequate to realize goals especially if it is spread across and not necessarily in a coordinated or in a way that's not being accessed in a bit more equitable way.

Three, this IGF has underscored how the scope of our work is incredibly important. While I have already recognized two aspects in my earlier comments, the two being ICTs for sustainable development and sustainable digitization along with the sustainability of ICTs themselves from their production and consumption and their underlying infrastructure. Those are two key points within the scope. But this topic also broadly includes the importance of three ‑‑ data such as climate and environmental data to track progress, data for lifecycle assessments, and the availability of public data sets. So that's a third aspect.

Then of course there's four, the sustainability of ICT organizational operations like carbon neutrality efforts, sustainable procurement. That's all important but still within its own subsection of the broader topic.

Then of course, five, sustainable web design. All of these things often get kind of conflated is the word. They get conflated with each other. Being clear about our scope is fundamental to communicating effectively especially among various organizations and stakeholder groups and, of course, measuring our own progress. This is why concerted multi‑stakeholder efforts that are cross sectoral are vital to transition from insufficient retroactive fixes to more permanent, sustainable and holistic solutions, ones that protect communities, the planet and even bottom lines as well as translate policy recommendations into on‑the‑ground action.

Just quickly before we get to the speaker introductions I just want to stress the objectives of the session.

I want to emphasize that much of the logic behind this session and our advocacy at the RFPC for the environment track is many conversations are happening but mainly in a siloed and not multi‑stakeholder way. We want to highlight the interconnection between the internet, sustainability, the SDGs and human rights, and how we can ensure that sustainability is fully integrated into the design, manufacturing, implementation and procurement of internet‑dependent technologies from raw materials to data storage and energy consumption to disposal at the end of hardware lifecycles.

We also want to address broadly ‑‑ not necessarily just in the session, but in general, generate substantive recommendations for how to break out of the siloed approach into ICT sustainability and use the IGF and NRIs to create space for cross sectoral dialogue, multi‑stakeholder policy solutions.

Above all ‑‑ and I have said this, but I want to stress it again. Above all we want to have a frank and honest discussion. This is not a webinar. This is an IGF workshop. We are not here to agree with each other. We encourage dissent and challenging of ideas, especially since we consider this session to be an idea lab of sorts. Like a laboratory where stakeholders from across the community and external sectors come together to address the topic holistically it is a component often missing from a conversation.

Having said that, I would like to quickly mention how we are trying to drive this conversation. The speakers will introduce themselves. I'm very happy to say that joining us especially to address the environmental activism and youth components of this topic is Weronika Koralewska joining us from Poland to offer a government perspective like an intergovernmental approach as well as an activist approach we have Alexandra Lutz who is joining from Belgium. Then it is a great honor that Pia Wiche is joining us from the private sector and the lifecycle assessment community, joining from Chile.

Hopefully soon enough and I don't see him yet, but hopefully joining us will be Wized Yao based in Nigeria working on community approaches. With that said, I would like to go ahead and open the floor to our panelists ‑‑ rather our key participants for the first round of interventions. You all have five minutes. Weronika, we can start with you.

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: Thank you, Michael, for this introduction. I'm Weronika Koralewska, an environmental activist trainer, educational program designer, youth worker and vice president of the Agri perma lab foundation which is an international NGO from Poland.

While designing this panel we thought about one of the guiding questions to be how we can drive the action and I actually thought that it will be useful to rephrase this question because we know that all the knowledge and skills are already there during all the IGF environmental sessions, in tomes, publications, research we have heard the solutions are already there. They are here on all the levels. User equipment, data centers, network. We have indicators based on lifecycle assessment, ideas of circular economy, ideas for obligatory open repair environment. We even have knowledge and skills of how to write a program, code, and framework so the software works more efficiently. It's really amazing how much knowledge and skills we as a community already have.

So then the question is why is the action not taking place? Why is it not happening? In my opinion, the reason why we get stuck with all these skills and knowledge ‑‑

[ Background noise ]

 

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: Sorry. Yeah. Why we get stuck in this process of pushing for change is that there is elements missing which are values and culture shift. I believe we are avoiding an honest discussion about values and I see three critical elements in this area in my opinion.

The first element is many times we are ‑‑ instead of solving problems we are kind of masking them. I think we should face the fact that everything comes at a price. Each stakeholder group needs to face this question. We as a society need to think what kind of environmental price are we willing to pay for implementing which technologies.

For example, probably business would lose part of the profits. The government would lose and the economy would lose part of the GDP and maybe would need to shift from the growth paradigm to the degrowth paradigm. Maybe the consumers will lose some of the comfort. We need to have the honest conversation about what are our values.

The second critical element I see in the sphere of values is I would say ethics instead of compulsion. We have this compulsion to just go for the new thing instead of fast, cautiously research it. Is it environmentally okay? So we have a compulsion to create new, new, new things instead of being more cautious of our impact on the environment.

The next element I see in this area of value and culture shift that's needed is we need to tackle the problem of diffusion of responsibility. I see in our conversations many times different stakeholders are pointing fingers at each other. The government says it's the business's fault. The business says the consumers want it and the consumer says, but the government allows it and the business produces it. So is diffusion of responsibility, lack of accountability is a big problem.

With that said I leave the floor to the other panelists. Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you and thank you for being right on time.

That was perfect. Now we are going to move to Alexandra. Are you ready to give your first intervention?

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: Thank you so much for the introduction and thank you for what you said, Weronika. It shows that the conversation is going to be great.

I work at the European parliament more specifically on questions on digital sustainability and also circular economy and other things. So what we can see from our perspective is we will take it seriously the rule as a regulator.

Basically, the point ‑‑ someone gave me this image the other idea. If you have three foxes in a market of chickens, are the chickens really free? It was to say, well, now we have rules in place and the rules need to really make good things happen by design. So if you have rules in place that push bad behavior in the first place then people aren't going to be able to do it really.

I like what you said, Weronika, that we have to ask ourselves what values we actually want to put at the center of our actions daily and of our rules.

So what are our priorities?

If today the priority is to make good bottom lines and make more products, make profits, et cetera, I guess we are on a good track. If we have values today being sustainable, just, fair, to ensure inequality isn't rising we need to rethink a bit the rules

The point is to say how do we ensure those rules are really embedded in the market currently. It's not to say we have to make so many rules if no one understands them. We have to make sure it is easy to do the right thing and to consume in the right way or design products in the right way. Today what we are mostly lacking is to say clear information on how to do better. So I think on the one side you have businesses who want to do similar practices, but the easy thing today to find practices because the questions haven't been asked. There is not like a central way of saying I'm on a good track and analyzing how sustainable digital practices, technologies are. So that's something I would like in the intervention as well, Mike, saying if you have not harmonized data sets and don't know well what is the vital impact is it harmonized, et cetera, what do we take into account? Just energy consumption, material part, also the impact on biodiversity, et cetera, then we are asking different questions.

So I would say it is a really good thing this conversation is happening today. There is a real track on it this time and many conversations had really the chance to happen already. So this is a conversation we need to continue to really get all the people around the table and to be able to say, okay, what are our priorities? How do we achieve them? What should each stakeholder group do to go in that direction and how do we ensure the rules make things easy to be sustainable by design in the future. I'll give it back.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. That was brilliant. Thank you so much for that interesting perspective that we'll definitely get into in the discussion.

Now let's go ahead and move to Pia. It is my honor and pleasure to have her here. This is her first IGF. So really inviting a newbie. This is wonderful. The floor is yours.

>> Thanks, Michael. Thanks, everyone for being here. Weronika and Alexandra for setting the theme. I'm going to add a third element to this discussion and that's data. In the ICT sector we work with data a lot. That's pretty much what's driving the energy consumption. It's how we store it, how we manage it and what we do with it.

I work in a special type of data. That's lifecycle data. I have been an environmental sustainability expert for over a decade and helped pretty much everybody from individuals to countries to become more sustainable. Now I have the pleasure of chipping in to this conversation and perhaps helping this community become more sustainable as well.

I would like to share a couple of slides so you can see what is going on from the lifecycle perspective. I hope you can see it in full screen. Is that good? Fantastic.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Looks great. Thank you.

>> This is my iPad. I can't use it anymore because the apps aren't being updated for that. There it is. A wonderful piece of equipment that's completely dead although it still turns on. Don't make fun of me, but I had one of the Windows Nokias. I didn't have apps and I didn't care because it worked well. Fell to the ground, broke the glass and I couldn't fix it because we didn't have technical service in Chile to fix that type of phone. It was discontinued.

These things were killed by design. I still have them because they are great examples of what different parts of the sector has for hardware and software. If you are talking about a battery, you have the chemical content which will cause environmental impacts and the management chip. How many of us haven't saved a phone just by resetting it because the battery was dying. Reset it to factory settings and it works again. That's simply crazy.

We have the wafer. That's the processor, CPU. So you have the instructions for how it works and then the wafer on which it is mounted. Both things impact the environment in different ways. It actually defines how you are going to be using the equipment.

We have the hard drive. You can choose how to use the hard drive. You can design it for longer and with better materials so it lives for longer. Same thing with the software design. I just talked about my iPad not working because of software. Even the keyboard. The type of plastic you use for the keyboard and the way you control the keyboard also make changes for how long it will be used.

That's the key word here. How long. The longer we use a material the better it is for the environment.

We also have ‑‑ there's a lot of things going on around recycling in the ICT sector which is fantastic. We have this data which is great. Literally a gold mine to have electronic waste. Recycling is cool but not enough. If we keep generating garbage basically we are going to continue generating environmental impacts over and over again. So actually from the lifecycle perspective what would be even better than recycling is to change the business model around ICT so that we can make things last for longer, change the way we make money out of the sector basically.

Weronika said a few minutes ago that the solutions are already there. We know it. This week we are launching green up, our web‑based app. Amazing because it will be in the cloud and we are an ICT group. So we have technology‑saving technology. The solutions are there but scattered. When you're starting to take hold of power that you have as a decision maker anywhere you are in the value chain you're going to need examples. You're going to need success stories to implement into your design so that things can last for longer, things can lend a better service throughout their lifetime.

And we are putting all of those solutions in green up. If you want to have access to the tool, follow the QR code. Sign up and as soon as it gets launched you're going to have access to that. Basically my contribution to this conversation is going to be how do we use data to define what's most important to look at in the beginning so that we can tackle that 20% of issues that are generating 80% of the environmental impacts. And that we can ultimately take a sustainable planet to live on. Back to you, Michael.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: That was brilliant, Pia. Thank you for that. I think you said Greenup is in Spanish at the moment which is fine as well. It is another reminder to connect with communities that aren't just primarily English‑speaking. Thank you so much. We'll come back to so many of the good things you talked about.

Our last official intervention is going to be given by Wized. Can you speak?

>> Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Good afternoon, good morning. Like Pia, I'm going to add another element to the question which is to look at the agency of individuals for change. If we want to change society, if we want to change the way things are done it's actually a critical factor.

Not every device that we see are products of specific ideas. What we see now is most digital tools are designed specifically to maximize profits with little interest to the consequences they produce. Of course we know often they have negative consequences on people. We consume bandwidth, energy and so forth. We produce E‑waste. That is bad for the sustainability of the environment.

But people aren't just robots. They respond to crises when they find them. So I think within the context in Nigeria I see responses by communities for the way in which technology is in communities. One is the respect of the use of energy ‑‑

[ Audio disruption ]

 

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: You were cut off for a second. Can you hear us? I'm sorry. His connection tends to come in and out. So just a good reminder, too, that we might be in the same boat but not in the same sea. Here we go.

>> Okay. Just like connectivity, energy is in extremely low supply in most developing countries. Therefore, people need to use generators and that means diesel‑based, gas‑based and that's pollution in the environment. So communities are responding and moving away from diesel‑based energy sources to solar‑based solutions. So in one central place where a number of consumers come and make use of it. That's one response to the crisis that energy is creating in our community.

The second is about increasing the presence of waste generally but E‑waste. People are responding to movement around recycling of waste. This recycling is not done specifically or from perspective of the economy.

One from the U.N. campaign on sustainability of the environment. Another is a fact that people see recycling as an economic activity. So also helping to lay a foundation within the society. The third response for me is about the repair and reuse movement that's coming up in Nigeria. Right now over 8,000 people are within the movement, computers, handsets and so forth.

Incorporating training or repairs into the secondary school curriculum. Again, with a previous response, this is not a response of economy. It is an opportunity and people are cashing in. So this element, for me, illustrates first the fact that inherent in the response of the people we can see elements of the economy coming up and will provide a foundation for the national capacity for embracing the economy. More importantly for me it illustrates that people are not just using technology but are responding in a way that they think of the problems. Thank you very much. Over to you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much. Also for everybody was on time and I appreciate that.

So what I would like to do now ‑‑ those were fantastic opening statements. There is so much to get there. I have a couple of questions myself. Just a reminder to anyone not speaking to please just mute yourself so there is no noise.

I have a few questions. Clearly some of the things that you all mentioned, almost everybody mentioned to some degree an element of the business models. So clearly economics has to be part of this conversation in one way or another. Regulation came up quite a bit. Obviously Pia and Wized talked about the circular economy and that's one of the primary tools used by the circular economy. So there is a clear overlap there. Does anyone have for this round any opening questions they would like to get clarification, anything that struck you as interesting that you would like to ask about?

This also extends to the panelists themselves. If any of you key speakers would like to highlight or mention anything that you all have spoken about as well.

Raise your hand if you'd like. You can raise your hand in the chat. Hi, good to see you. If anybody has any questions, let us know. Otherwise we'll go into mine and I'm fairly certain you don't want me to speak for an hour and a half. I promise this has to be the most civil and less rambunctious IGF I have ever been to.

>> Michael?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Yes.

>> I see a question. Hi, there are many viable approaches in terms of recycling E‑waste. A lot of emphasis given to the lifestyle aspect of using it. Do you think in the future innovative ways will evolve to tackle E‑waste?

So maybe because Wized was speaking about it, you want to go first?

>> Okay. Thank you very much. We have a history in terms of ideas on technology. So it's to say there are more innovative ways to evolve as we move around. It's very clear even in terms of the extraction, travel, materials for waste that the efficiency can improve. We can have ways to reduce energy consumption. You could have waste that's much more clean in terms of the handling of products. Recycling. So I'm optimistic and confident that we will have more innovative ways in the future to tackle E‑waste provided that profit is not just the central motive driving technology. Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. That really ‑‑ oh, great. Daphne has a question. Please unmute yourself and just introduce yourself.

>> Thank you so much. My name is Daphne. I'm from the Netherlands. One of the U.N. youth ambassadors this year with Michael as my mentor. Hi, Michael.

Anyways, I was wondering how can we start the culture shift? I have a conversation with so many people about we need to be more environmentally friendly and with regards to ICT and everything. But it's always like one ear in, one out. How can we actually establish such a culture shift? It's a big question but an important question to ask as well. Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Go ahead, Pia. If you would like to take that.

>> Yes. I would like to mix it with the previous question. I see that a lot of people are tackling their desire to be more sustainable from a recycling, zero waste perspective. I think that's kind of the last place we should be looking at which is our waste.

A more powerful way to look at sustainability is to look at our consumption patterns. Things we can do right away to change dramatically our impact on the planet is first of all consume everything we have. Our homes are filled with things that have been stored there forever. Your Honor first challenge I have set for myself and for others is, okay, finish up everything you have. That also comes to technology. So use it until it's gone. Until it is broken. This connects nicely to the previous question because a more innovative way to tackle E‑waste is to think of the way we produce the materials and things like the fair phone are helpful because you can easily change just the part of the device that is not working anymore. That could severely reduce the impacts of the device we use.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. Would anybody like to comment as well? Or anybody in the chat, feel free to speak up.

Otherwise I have a couple of questions I would like to ask based on the first round. Go ahead. Please.

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: Great questions to start with. On the culture shift it's not something that happens overnight. That's why usually what I think is people ask how to be more sustainable. Sustainability is just not something made of unrelated actions that are sporadically there. It's not just things on the side. It has to be the main focus and to be really the aim at the end. That's why in terms of economics if you have just the idea of saying, hey, we need to see ‑‑ English is failing me. Doesn't matter. The point is just to make more profits and see how much product and service there is every time. That will be the aim and at the end things on the side.

Maybe the point is to say if everyone has enough and we can't go beyond without endangering our way of life, planet and us with it. Then it becomes a different conversation. How do we achieve that? I think changing the law and also things that guide our actions is important. If you say sustainability is a cool value it becomes something else. I think that's being done more and more in terms of concrete things we can do. It's basically product design.

If we say, okay, you cannot use a material with this and this impact and we can measure it and change the conversation. For now it's like impacts we don't take into account in the price, for example, or in terms of being able to sell it Ortiz for it. So we can change this and it becomes something else. I think people are ready for the cultural shift because it becomes a marketing argument to be sustainable. It's an avenue to go there. The question of E‑waste, thank you, Mohamed, for this one. It's a bit the same.

First when we design a product to be able to think about the end of life during the design phase. So as Pia said, you can easily dismantle it at the end.

For now again it's easier and cheaper to mine more materials than to produce one or having long and durable products. Also incentives.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Alex. Wized, do you mind muting yourself if you are not speaking? Thank you. Weronika, can you try to keep it to maybe a minute, minute and a half just because we have one more question before we move on to the next round of interventions.

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: Sure. I just wanted to comment on these two questions. Without the recycling versus focusing on durability, I have noticed and I think it is a common experience that the possibility of recycling gives a false sense of security and lack of responsibility because, okay, if I recycle it, my hands are clean and that's it. But that's not the issue. Because devices are not fully recyclable usually. The highest percentage we can get is probably 70, 80%. Then the energy that was used to produce it is the other thing.

About the question about the culture shift, well, we are part of culture. We create the culture every day through our activity, public activity. I will just mention it now quickly because later I will come back to this point.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. One thing to mention is as much as we emphasize the need for engineers and manufacturers and miners to be involved, so should the marketing departments. Because that's a big part of setting the culture, setting the expectations, talking about values. A lot of that is reflected in the marketing practices that underpin the business model. That's just something to keep in mind. Leonard, you have a hand up. We can come to you before we close this part.

>> Thank you, Michael. I want to build on the culture discussion. But just as introduction I'm also one of the internet society youth ambassadors this year and also working with major IT company so I have two hats in this discussion. I think that's why I'm also asking the point that I'm going to raise now which is I think a key issue with the culture debate is like the overall perception of sustainability as a problem.

I still see in the day to day discussion it is perceived as a luxury problem. People in the Euro‑centric context have the ability to discuss these issues because they are not such fundamental problems as in other parts of the world. Within that area of sustainability, the field of digital sustainability is even smaller and even more backing in terms of seeing the severity of the problem. So my question is taking into account there are other crucial problems in the world such as half the world's population lacking access to internet, how can we still ‑‑ how can we convey the urgency of the problem of digital sustainability without coming off like two from above, so to say. That could be a major issue to address. Thank you.

>> I would like to start by saying the sustainability market is a luxury market because people are willing to pay more to do better. That's just sales. But it's not something I agree with. I don't agree with sustainable things being more expensive. Absolutely not. Then they never go mainstream and we never tackle the problem.

Going deeper into your question sustainability isn't a luxury problem. It is a need. Even more for those countries not as advanced as Europe. Because they have structural issues.

I will tackle the issue of food. We think of organic when we think sustainable. In fact, it is not just about being organic. It is about a sustainable production system in food would be one that doesn't make people sick, that provides enough nutrients, and that looks after the environment. Of course that makes money for the farmer.

But the way we have developed our food systems is not really going in that direction. Sustainability especially for agriculture‑based economies that are currently sick, poor, and malnutritioned.

So just to change your mindset. That's what I wanted to add. Please, the other panelists, you may go on.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Does anybody have anything to add? If not, I see that Shawna has her hand up. I did say we were going to close this round for interventions at the moment. If it's okay, keep your hand and once the next round is over we'll come back to you. Does anybody have anything to add to Pia's comments in response to Lennart's question? Oh, thank you, Shawna. I'm glad we have the chat. Please unmute yourself and feel free to speak.

>> Thanks, Michael. Can you hear me okay?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: I hear you great.

>> Just to say really appreciated your question, Lennart. It's something that's come up within APC network. We have a member in South Africa and they have set up a community network, a mesh network so they can really develop connectivity in the community. But one of the reflections they had is that ‑‑ I mean, they are so focused really on basic human rights issues with access to clean water, access to food, employment. So issues of environmental sustainability. Not that they are not relevant, but they are not as at the forefront. So actually just this year APC is supporting a member of ours, computer aid who develops solar learning labs which are basically shipping containers that have been transformed with solar panels on top and usually eight to ten workstations inside. They are working with the network to set up a solar learning lab in the network and trying to understand from each other the learnings from the community connectivity models and the understanding from the setting up of the solar living labs to really make ‑‑ to understand and make it relevant to the community. I think it is something we need to look at and not that it's a privilege to work on this, but that there are so many other things people are dealing with. I think it is important that we make it relevant to people who are trying to be working on it. Thanks.

Michael, don't hate me. I just want to add a little comment. I truly believe that technology and the internet are the solutions to these issues. If we want to improve access to water, we can use technology. To improve the way we are pushing food we need to use technology. All of the other structural issues, even transparency can be helped with big data, with the internet. So all of these issues require this group of stakeholders to take action on that. And to do so in a sustainable way. You guys are the solution.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Alex, if you have a final thought and then we'll move to the second part of the discussion.

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: I agree that it's the most dispossessed people who ‑‑ when it comes to sustainability. I would say it's mostly not countries from the north that have problems in E‑waste. It's also that there are problems with competing resource usages. Today we have a definite number of metals needed for the transition. Mostly solar panels, et cetera. They are also heavily needed for technological devices. To do both you have to see where you are going to put those resources. So maybe you can have some countries which will do a great smart city and everything, plus ecological transition and others have none of them.

It's also questions we have to ask ourselves. It will basically also make some people's lives harder than others. Then also, yeah, on the technology need it is always something we need to ponder to say, okay, where do we need technology and where do we need less? I know, for example, some groups said, yeah, we need technology now to do sustainable AI and climate change. And yeah, we have to use it to be more efficient in the way we do industrial agriculture. Coming also from a perspective where we do have to go toward a more stable practice and not put more pesticides but to do none of them and defer that. Technology will not help. Maybe it would help to find new ways to do it. So it depends on how you use technology. It's not mutual.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Alex. I'd like to think this is actually a good segue into say the second part of what I really hope this discussion can get to which is essentially what can we do to help drive change within the current ‑‑ to the current paradigm within and among our respective communities and networks. What I'm trying to get to is, okay, we are working on this here and there. Maybe we are not talking to each other. Maybe our colleagues aren't talking to people they should be. One thing I find with myself is I'll reach out to people and they struggle to understand why am I talking to them? Why am I trying to get in touch with them? Because they don't work on ICT sustainability. Yes, but maybe they work on conflict minerals, mining. Maybe they work on something else.

The idea being there is so many layers of integration within this. That's why we talk about the holistic nature of it. Trying to see across the board how those things are connected. What can we do to spur change within our networks and communities and get people to talk more. This is the first time with Pia we have a lifecycle expert in the community.

With that I want to give it back to the panelists. Say three to five minutes, if you could make ‑‑ I know it's short. We're good, but you have three to five minutes to make key points on that particular question. I'm sorry. I forgot to mention let's go through the same order we went through. Weronika, we'll start with you.

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: Thanks, Michael. If the question is what can we do to help change and what can our respective communities do, I represent the civilian society sector, NGOs and we mostly can contribute through education and awareness raising.

I believe we are in the very, very interesting point in history now. I want to share with you the experience of the person from the eastern European country, from Poland. But I guess many of you, wherever you are from, maybe you can relate to this experience one way or the other. Many countries in their history went through some system change or revolutions.

So at the end of the communist times in Poland, the last decade of the communist times, most of the people already knew that system, communist system was just ridiculous. It had so many absurds. They would still go to all the compulsory demonstrations and scream long live the communist party and Lenin and Stalin, but in their hearts they knew and were sure how absurd it was.

Talking about the culture shift, I believe we are in the same moment where we see we cannot go on like this. This is madness what we are doing to the environment and our consumption patterns and the solutions. As a representative of the NGO, I cannot underestimate the value of education. They need to advocate good holistic education of the deep ecological thinking. I mean education not just about words like climate change, decarbonization. But the planetary boundaries that include nine Fokkers like chemical pollution, biodiversity laws, nine factors.

So teaching children and youth that these children will welcome in ten years, IT designer, politicians and consumers. By creating the good educational framework both from the NGO site and the governmental sites and public schools, we are ‑‑ we really can create lasting change. I know that we are a bit impatient. No, no, it takes a long time, education. It's crucial to invest in this general sensitivity for the environment and for the fact that all of us as human beings should be ‑‑ it should be obvious to us that we are part of the interconnected eco‑system and if we cure one part of it we will cure ourselves, too. With that said, I can give the floor to the others because we don't have much time.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Weronika. I appreciate that. Alex, can we go ahead and go to you?

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: Yes, absolutely. It was a great example, Weronika, what you mentioned about the communist time and when you see change happening you know it has to happen. That was a great illustration, thank you for sharing that.

How do we spark change? To change the entire world system, thank you, Michael. It's a question of a governance issue having the right place for this. Most decisions happen in silos. Everywhere we are. Also in terms of state governments to try to work on some specific issues and how do you ensure there is no gap between them. You have to see them and work on it. With digital stability it has been identified as being something we need to work on. How do we get toward working on this? It is interesting what you said, Michael on how you reach out to people who don't know why you are reaching out to them. If you go to people and the environment, well, we are not tech people. The tech people say, we are not from the environment sector. Okay, great, who's left? A few people thankfully are and they are on this call. Great to see so many of them. It's why we need to have those conversations. Those moments where we talk to each other and organize this intersection to also propose concrete policy measures we can put in place. It will be great to have more moments where we think, what do we need to place now in terms of policy so we see good examples by businesses, what the NGOs are seeing and the tech is building. How do we share good practices? They exist so making them visible but also some people are comfortable with staying the way they are. It is the problem of the current people in power. We have less than ten years now to make the changes for climate change. Thankfully the generation is doing things we see. That's a good thing. We need to be sure when we are dealing with a subject we put on the different lenses we need. It is the same for gender questions. When you do a policy you have to think what is the consequence in terms of gender and now the question also is in terms of sustainability for tech and the other way around. I'm confident that's already happening so the question is bring it up and continue our work.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Alex. Pia, over to you.

>> Thanks. How do we connect such a vast network of professionals that also have silos. We talk about silos as institutions but we are all in a silo of our own mind. We all have biases and we all have a limited amount of knowledge and wisdom and experience in our brains. This is something I have come to appreciate in the last two years. We had to learn until we knew it on. We could make the decisions, but in fact this is quite beautiful to have this distributed knowledge because it forces us to work in teams. I think the first step is to acknowledge we are in a silo. Whatever we do we are going to be in a silo. So that already opens the door to go out and, as Alexandra said, put on different lenses and call different actors when we are making a decision. That's good when we are working in committees. It usually happens in the private sector, public sector as well. On the day to day struggle of designing the next process of looking at what screen we are going to use or what marketing materials we are designing then it comes down to having the right people in your close proximity and knowing just a little bit but just enough so it will direct you in the right direction.

Weronika spoke about education. One thing that's critical is to have a lifecycle perspective. Our entire education system is built on a linear perspective where A causes B causes C but we have to learn how to think in networks. I think that the people in this community are very well suited to that because you guys work with networks all the time.

But we need to transfer that knowledge and the way that we do things into our everyday modus operandi where we build a network that's vast enough to provide the information we need. We don't need to know it all. We don't all need to be lifecycle experts. But we need to know there is a lifecycle and have it in mind so when we are designing we can imagine at least a piece of that and try to optimize it.

One thing that I think would be very useful for every community is to have more lifecycle assessment experts in the team. So when designing a new product there should be a guide measuring the environmental impacts of the product itself and end of life like waste, but also of the ‑‑ all of the environmental impacts that come from producing the minerals, producing the cardboard for the box, from everything that has to happen so that product comes to life and then dies. So having more lifecycle assessment experts would be a great way to tackle those issues with data.

And the other thing is to talk more, not just within ourselves in this community but also to the users. We talked a lot in preparing this about human rights. There is something we haven't touched very much upon yet which is the economy. Many of us in our generation cannot afford a house. We cannot afford a car because everything is super expensive. We are spending whatever we make. So we are literally spending minutes of our lives and hours and days of our lives to buying things.

How are we as a generation serving our peers with the design of the things we sell them? How much of their lives are we taking with the design of the product we make? If we can make a product that lasts for longer that's more sustainable, we are actually giving back life, minutes of life to people who are spending their life to work to pay for the stuff we produce.

So that's a huge mind changer. I invite everyone to reflect upon because it opens another door and that's the door to changing the way that we do things, changing our business model, changing our designs, et cetera. It puts our hearts into our work and really makes us believe that and see how important our work is for the life of others, for the quality of life of other people.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: That was beautiful, Pia, thank you so much for that very provocative thought.

YZ, do you have comments about how we can be reaching out to others and especially in your sense how we can be reaching out to more people within communities on the ground, especially people that aren't necessarily involved in this but are very much affected by the end result of the lack of design and sustainability in design.

>> Thank you very much. I think ‑‑

[ Audio disruption ]

 

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: I'm sorry. You cut out for a second. Could I ask you, it might be easier if you turn off the video.

>> Yeah.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Can you start again? I'm sorry.

>> Okay. So I'm saying we need to have a conversation that brings users, communities, government, designers together to reflect on, first of all, the design principles. What is it that we want from the product that we designed. Is it that we want to design for longevity or the question of doing it for shorter obsolescence which is what characterizes now.

We need also to drive the open architecture in the design of products so that people could take better care just like we talked about. Designing with repairability in mind.

We must also organize the conversation. It's a question of power. What power do communities have in order to ensure that the perspective. So I think what is most critical is what work we do at the community level and grassroots to ensure that the communities are able to maximize the power of organizing capacity, this agency so when they speak, they speak with an effective presence of the community they are about to mobilize in the eco‑system. Whatever the discussion you do, the people who ultimately have the power will carry the day.

For me, we need to think about how do communities acquire and use power to ensure that their perspectives reflected on the design of these things, thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. I'm glad we were able to hear you. Thank you, all of you for these wonderful interventions. I want to open it back up to the floor now. Panos, would you like to go first?

>> Do you hear me?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Yes.

>> I wanted to react to the comment by Pia who was confident that we need technology, she stated strongly we need technology for this and that. I think we should be critical questioning how much technology we need because technology has brought a lot of the problems we have today.

I understand in many communities there is technology as we experienced before. But also we should collaborate on how to focus other communities. We should put into the picture also the growth community in the domain of sustainability and discuss with other groups proposing solutions in agriculture in the cities, in housing, in monetary systems and try to see together how we can create more local lifestyle. We can redefine the neighborhood and locality. The most important part of communication is the face to face.

Instead of making the internet greener, we can find ways to use less with less data, less platforms. But still not exactly, of course. So, again, this is a point I want to make.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. Very quickly, YZ, do you mind muting yourself? There is background noise that's being picked up. Or, Claudia, could you ‑‑ thank you, everyone.

Pia, would you like to take this comment?

>> Absolutely. Thank you, panel, so much. I believe in terms of technology we have the same issue we have with money and water. That's distribution. So we have a lot of technology in places which are totally nonsensical ‑‑

[ Phone ringing ]

‑‑ I'm sorry about this. Talking about technology.

Like I don't need my coffee maker to be smart and sense when I'm 15 minutes from home to make my coffee. I can live with brewing my own coffee when I get home. But we need more technology down in the fields to control the way that we are watering plants, how much fertilizer we are putting there and when we should be harvesting the crops.

Totally agree with you that we should reduce in some areas, but I understand that we need to add a lot in others. Ultimately what we need is to make countries especially in the global south to leapfrog. We really can't ‑‑ we physically can't. The planet will not stand that they take the same curve that the more developed countries have taken. We need them to step to here to here in one big leap and for that we need technology especially in the productive sector. Thanks a lot for the question.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Just goes to show, too, that smart solutions are not all created equal. And the application are obviously not equal as well. Speaking of equality, who can access ‑‑ the person who can access the smart coffee maker is definitely not the same person who needs to access smart solutions for agriculture, let's say necessarily. So we have to recognize the inherent inequality as well that exist within that paradigm.

Does anyone else have a question or would any of our panelists like to respond to panelists as well? If there are not any questions, I have a few of my own. There are a few in the Q&A as well.

I think I'm just going to go ahead then. I want to touch on this a bit more. Two things really. One and this is for everybody, including the people listening or that are attending. Are there any specific partnerships or collaborations that you could identify that are missing from your respective work? For instance, a good example of this, for instance, Pia is a lot of people don't know about FLPCI and you can talk more about this.

What are some collaborations that could exist that are not currently in existence? Also, because so many of you discussed business models and whatnot, I feel like as much as I agree with this personally, I feel like the moment we start talking about business models, a lot ‑‑ it automatically turns off almost anybody in the private sector not focused on this already.

 

It maybe comes off as maybe it's not the right thing to say. I disagree. It's important to have obviously people that are part of the private sector as part of the conversation. That's another big question is how do we get more people from the private sector. Bear in mind that the private sector isn't one whole thing. Fair Phone is participate of the private sector as much as Apple and Facebook are or Samsung. It's a good point of clarification.

But how do we get companies to change their business model or update their business model or take a more sustainable approach within their business model? It's not just about limiting the packaging in a phone which is fantastic. It's also about other things like trying to stop telling people they need a phone if they don't need one, for instance. How do we change this?

I would love to hear anybody's comments on this. I know. It's a big question. I don't expect us to come up with all the answers now.

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: I'll give it a shot. You can see there is not just one solution to them all. I think what is important in terms of business sector is to be able to help out to do the right thing easily.

Right now I think we have this knowledge missing, et cetera. So when someone comes in and they want to be more sustainable they have to juggle sustainable practices and ICTs, et cetera.

So it's not easy to find yet, I guess. The question is how do you make sure people who want to find information can easily find it so it's not something completely new that they have to do to turn to specific people who have specific knowledge and maybe want a lot of money for it. Some have it, some don't. So I think we need as much information and data as we can publicly available so people can make those decisions easily.

One solution we are working on now in the particle lent is to advocate for digital sustainability index where the idea would be, okay, it kind of flags what is the environmental impact of digital technologies. Well, through a lifecycle assessment we said, okay, if I use this kind of ‑‑ all my words again. Computer phrasing before my employees because it is also that, not just tech companies. All companies have technological practices and so they need to be assembled, too. Once you have all the computers, how do I make sure they are sustainable and, two, that they will maybe stay long. Maybe digital solutions. I know my equipment has to be long and durable to be reparable. Should I take those and buy them, lease them? Also do a website. I guess other people can talk better than me on those websites. But all those things are in existence but not really put forward. Usually we try to establish criteria that would be good for everyone. Our plan is to make it first for public procurement. That's the way we can also start things. In Europe alone it's 15% of GDP which is the word I was looking for earlier.

So we can make those things happen. Okay, this is how you do sustainable tech. This is an index that shows you what impacts it has when you do this and that choice. I guess it gives a good direction.

Then I also think it should be the other side. Those practices, we should prohibit them. One of them saying that when you have a practice that consists in reducing the life span of an object just to see the object being ‑‑ before you had washing machines for years. Now it's five. Technology should be more about having a new thing every year. Also those kinds of practices. It's better if you have a new phone every year. It would be just for five or seven years I'm going to give you new things differently. Those things need to be redirected in terms of incentives. It should be in a good way of saying, okay, we give you a card for this and also those who do practices for those trying hard.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Alex. I'm conscious of time. But if you could do maybe just what is the role of regulation in all of this as well? You mentioned market regulation, too. I feel like it would be remiss to end this conversation without addressing that within the context of this conversation.

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: Sure. I thought I did in some ways, but basically what you can do is as a regulator there is something called the eco‑design directive. It sets out standards that they have to respect when coming up with new products. It is mostly about electronics but can be others.

That's one way of saying, okay, if your product doesn't respect those requirements it cannot enter the EU market. That would be one.

Also with old unfair practices, it is not a directive and the one we want to add as well would be the one on premature obsolescence. It's really known that you don't make the best effort to make your product be less long. Not for every product but when it is clear you could do it better, but you are gluing the battery to your phone just to prevent it being repaired, it would be flagged as a premature obsolescence abusive practice and you can't do that anymore.

Then the standard digital ‑‑ oh, the ‑‑ nope. Can't do it. Digital sustainability index, damn it, too many words, too long. We should have a better word for this. Something easier to say.

Anyway, that could be a way of saying, all the data would be publicly held. It means whether you are a big firm or a small firm and you want to innovate, do stuff, you could have access to this easily and know what direction you go. So it is also giving access to data and there is a huge battle saying, okay, who has access to it? There are monopolies getting all the data. It also impacts AI, but that's not a conversation.

Those are small ways in which you can regulate things out there going in the right direction.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Alex. We have about five minutes left. We can extend if we need to and we did start late. So bear in mind, everyone.

So I would like to give everybody at least a very final thought before we conclude the session. There are good question and answers that we didn't get to. I'm sure there are some in chat as well. But as for a closing thought to all of you I want if you could to kind of answer this question: Are there specific partnerships or collaborations you can identify that are missing in your work, especially one that the internet governance community could potentially help facilitate. Along with this, potentially just one key kind of takeaway that you would like for people to walk away from whether it be a policy recommendation or what is it that we can work on going forward, especially over the next year, at least what's a priority to you?

If you could just answer that, let's say, within one or two minutes, that would be wonderful. Weronika, would you like to go first? Or Pia? Who would like to go first?

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: I can.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Perfect.

>> WERONIKA KORALEWSKA: Thanks. As for the question about collaborations and partnerships, I know that many times when government representatives and government officials from IT departments are visiting the IGF and other fora like this, but I think besides the ministries of development, I think we should have collaborations with ministries of education. Because implementing just really three pages in the student book about the relationship of ICT and environment would be such a success. Children spend eight hours a day at schools, you know, 10 or 15 years of their life and there is not even one sentence in their student books about it. That could be a good partnership.

One takeaway ‑‑ final takeaway I would like to emphasize is that we might try not to stop being just human beings and not to ‑‑ because we have a tendency to obstruct. Like now I'm a politician and I take a position. Now I'm the marketing design. Now I am the IT person. Come on. We are also just human beings. Don't forget about this while making decisions and inventing marketing slogans that don't make sense, while implementing the illegal practices of premature stuff like just don't stop being human ‑‑ a decent human being with integrity and honesty. Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you so much, Weronika. Alex, are you free to go now? Or Pia? Go ahead, Alex.

>> ALEXANDRA LUTZ: Okay. I'll be really short. Well, in terms of collaboration, I think also working more close together between the sustainability actors and the tech actors, that's stating the obvious, but it's still progress. Things are being done which is great. I would encourage more about that specific issue as well. It would help spark the concrete solutions and make everybody feel legitimate in participating with this progress.

The last thought I would like to share is while tech is not an inevitable force happening to us, tech decisions are political choices that are being made and they are often not debated in our societies as we ‑‑ it's mostly behind closed doors. Things happen. It is not going everywhere. I would call for having democratic debates and populations being way more into this, but also the sustainability would come up way more when people are asked about them because it's something people care about. So, yeah, I would encourage also having democracy basically being put back in those kinds of political decisions and decision processes.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Well said, Alex. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is I have spoken English as a primarily language for more than 30 years and I forget words all the time. Please never apologize while I am ever moderating something for not remembering a word. Happens to me all the time. Thank you so much for this wonderful, insightful, deep intervention.

Pia, speaking of wonderful, insightful and deep, please.

>> Thank you, Michael. I felt so flattered throughout the session. Thanks. Great way to start the week.

I want to tell you a story on my final remarks about good intentions and the demon. Once upon a time there was a really sustainable company who sold remanufactured cell phones. And they are really concerned with sustainability and that's why they are selling used cell phones and not new cell phones. They thought, we are going to make a next step in sustainability and we are going to change our packaging from our very heavy cardboard box with plastic inside and we are going to get rid of all the plastics and use a beautifully branded cotton bag.

And that company found the demon. Actually it was Maxwell's demon which stemmed the entire theory of information, in fact. They didn't have the information so the demon came over and said, oh, my God, you're doing this change. Did you know your beautifully branded cotton bag to surround your remanufactured cell phone has ten times more impact than the cardboard box you were using before? They totally went into shock. This is based on a very true story. That conclusion was arrived to thanks to lifecycle assessment. If anything, sustainability is not obvious. Most of the things we think are more sustainable are less sustainable when you look at them from a lifecycle perspective.

When making design decisions I advise everyone to get a lifecycle practitioner on board. If it is too expensive to hire one in Europe, hire one in a developing country. Prices are cheaper there. Externalize. But get the information running to design because that's when you have the opportunity to reduce 80, 90% of the impacts your product will have throughout its life. Once it is designed and built there is little we can do. So work on design with designers, with lifecycle experts and let's change the structure of the industry.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you, Pia. Last but certainly not least, YZ, do you have final thoughts, places where partnerships or collaborations that you can identify are missing from this work? Feel free to comment.

>> Well, I see two directions. One is that much of the job we do, government is absent at the table. So we need to do more collaboration with the governments in that sense. But second is that I think the two movements, the digital rights movement and the environment movement are applied separately. There is a lot that the digital rights movement would learn from the environmental justice movements, especially about whereas they did environmental movement is deeply rooted within grassroots, the digital rights movement is more elitist and not rooted in grassroots.

So we need to learn more about that. My last point is that ITU has been talking about promoting the satellite economy. At least it's representative governments where governments aren't doing anything about promoting the circular economy. We need the a way to get into that terrain, push so that the government becomes much more serious about it.

In particular, I think that there is a limit to recycling. The life span gets shorter and shorter. Also in terms of increasing and products so that should be a strength of it. Thank you.

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: Thank you. As much as we want to create new ‑‑ not necessarily create new, but as much as we want to push the envelope on especially issues that don't get enough oxygen, there is a lot of existing initiatives that do require more concerted effort as well as they relate to circular economy, to integrating lifecycle perspective into design, et cetera.

So I really want to leave you all with this before we go. Don't despair. There are many things we can do. The reason why I present this in a way that's like, who do we need to connect with? Who is out there? The fact is there are so many people out there. I know because I'm in the message saying, hi, I do this and you have no idea who I am. I want you to know me. I want you involved in these conversations even if it is beyond the initial impetus behind internet governance which was the ones and zeroes, domain names and whatnot. This is all relevant. As we continue to build the internet, we need to make sure we are integrating these design principles into it in such a way that even if we want to connect the next billion we need to make sure we can do it full stop as well as make sure we do it sustainably assuming that's what the individuals who are not connected want to begin with.

There are so many things to take into account here. I have so many other questions. We could probably continue this for two or three hours if not more. I know we are way over our time. So with that I would like to conclude with the following. I just want to say this session was organized with the support of my colleagues, Minda, Marian and June. Would not have been possible with them. Special thanks to Shawna Finnigan for her work. I especially want to thank Yz, Weronika, Alexandra and Pia for agreeing to be part of this and also for kind of humoring me a little bit with what I'm teasing myself about. Like, hey, Pia, you do LCA. I want to invite you to something that's completely kind of off the path you would be on. Practicing what we preach. Trying to bring these voices together to have these kinds of discussions. We need to have more.

Thank you so much for this incredible insight. I want to thank Claudia who has been our host of this session, all of our colleagues at the IGF secretariat who made this possible including Anja, Luis, and Samantha and I like to thank our captioner. I don't know if he or she can hear this now. I'm going to open the subtitle.

 

[ Kelli ]

I don't know your name, so if you could write it so I could tell you thank you. And the tech team. Oh, Kelli, thank you very much and thank you very much to our tech team behind the scenes. Lastly, to everyone who joined as well. We appreciate your participation, enthusiasm for the topic and most importantly, I want to thank all members of the IGF community who have been so enthusiastically supporting this idea including Anriette in the MAG. We have been trying so hard for so long to put this on the agenda and see that hard work validated with the success of the thematic track means the world to me. It's really so encouraging as well.

This conversation is only the start of something so much bigger. We look forward to working with more of you going forward and invite you to engage with us further after the IGF as we take stock of the discussion throughout these past two weeks and plan the next step ahead for 2021.

In case you would like more information, you can reach out to me or us directly. With that said, once again, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.