IGF 2020 - Day 5 - DC Sustainable Internet Governance & the Right to Development

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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>> MODERATOR: Welcome to the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition DC meeting, it stands for Dynamic Coalition, and we have a wonderful session ahead of us today called Sustainable Internet Governance & the Right to Development.  We're linking issues around environmental sustainability, the right to development as inscribed in UN treaties and covenants, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Right to Development itself and Human Rights.  That's the purpose of our meeting. 

We have a very strong team.  I will introduce you briefly, we have Minda Moreira, Co‑Chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition. 

We have six speakers that I'll introduce one at a time.  We have June Parris, our Rapporteur, so if you have questions, comments, please put them in the chat because it is a little easier to collect that way.  We have been keeping track of any questions arising, and feel if you're an attendee to put your hand up and Michael will let me know that you're there so that we can put you in.

We will start with formal proceedings.  We'll have the first round of comments from the speakers and put it to the floor, and we'll go from there basically.  It is very straightforward.  Just in order to get ourselves in the right frame of mind, the point is that it is continuing drawing links between environmental sustainability and Human Rights within the internet governance policy consultations.  It is focused today on Article 4 of the Charter of Human Rights and the principles for the internet and we have convened this meeting on the light of ongoing, increasingly urgent need to not only identify, but to rectify the adverse environmental impacts of internet technologies so that outputs for this session, we will ‑‑ we will put in our meeting notes and that will be brought forward to meeting on the 16th of November, which is a workshop and we really encourage you to be there as well.  This is part one of a two-parter.

Without too much further ado, I can point you to the link, if someone, if Michael, if you can paste in the link to our actual session on the IGF website, people can check that out.  I would now like to give the floor to Minda Moreira, our program Chair and the floor is yours.

>> MINDA MOREIRA: Thank you.  Good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining our annual meeting.

I'm Minda Moreira.  I am Co‑Chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition and it is great to see so many people joining us here today and the warm welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first time. 

I take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the RPC and the work that we do.  We're based here at IGF.  We are an open network of individuals and organizations committed to making Human Rights work for the online environment and we have been around since 2008, anyone can join us by signing up to our mailing list.  Every year we hold elections for available positions at the Steering Committee and this year the call for nominations will be made soon.  If you would like to get involved with sign‑ups for that list.  The role of the Steering Committee, it is to coordinate the coalitions outreach work and we meet regularly throughout the year to update on our activities.  All our outreach work draws on the Charter of Human Rights and the principles of the internet and this is our main document.  The charter basically articulates existing international Human Rights laws and norms and translates them to the online context.  What I personally find fascinating about the charter, it is that the outcome of an amazing collaborative exercise so many people, many organizations were involved in the drafting of this document and the result, it is this document, it is a strong, accessible, open and a living document as we will see throughout this discussion.  The charter was published in 2011 and so we are basically celebrating the tenth anniversary next year.  It is available in ten languages.  It also has ten principles for the internet which are translated into 26 languages.  Over the years, they have supported the rights inspired initiatives and we have done a lot of collaborative work with partners from other Dynamic Coalitions, Civil Society networks, universities, political representatives, technical community, all of these to raise awareness and we need to implement rights‑based frameworks for the online environment.  I personally find it really inspiring to learn of so many people in academia, NGOs, governments, that find the Charter is useful for raising awareness in communities and to advance Human Rights online.

Also, since 2014 the coalition is an observer to the CDMSI, which is the Steering Committee on Media Information of Society at the Council of Europe.  A very, very important part of our work is the translation of the Charter.  We are extremely grateful for the work of the translation teams that made the Charter accessible to so many people around the world.  Here in this room, for instance, we have some that coordinated the Charter to be put in Arabic and we have others that are responsible for the French version and next spring we're publishing the Italian translation and this is from students from universities and we're really looking forward to have the Italian version available for 2021.

Also, through the Charter we have discussed and highlighted many Human Rights issues online, to name just a few, the right to access, protection of Rights of minorities, including migrants, refugees, privacy and data protection, online views, emerging technologies, Human Rights, and more recently environmental sustainability.  This year the Steering Committee has been focusing on Articles 1 to 4 of the Charter and we continue collaboration was other groups and initiatives.  For instance, we joined digital sustainability to discuss environmental sustainability of the ICTs and we have had members of the coalition participating in rights‑based event, such as rights Con and we have worked together with Civil Society groups, APC.

We have been also participating in national and regional initiatives and we are part of the organizing team of creating internet governance last June and we're very excited to continue and contribute on this issue with them for other activities.  Here at IGF we are organizing a workshop as mentioned, environmental sustainability and Human Rights, this is a mandate on the 16th of November and we're participating in the main session also on the environment this Monday night, Michael Oghia will moderate that session, and we're also participating in the WSIS session on Wednesday, the 11th.

You can also visit our booth number 3 at IGF Village.

I will shortly pass it over again to Marianne Franklin for this meeting which we're focused on Article 4 of the Charter.  This is the right to development through the internet.  This Article has inspired a lot of our work in recent years so our meeting in Paris, back in 2018 and also our session internet and the climate crisis last year in Berlin. 

And in this session, we'll be looking at environmental impact of internet connected technologies effecting Human Rights, especially the right to development and also we can work together to ensure that we have the environmental sustainable and the rights‑based internet.

I think that's all for me.  I hope you enjoy the discussion, commence and questions, they're very welcome.

Thank you very much.

Over to you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much.

I did share my screen.  Could somebody just confirm that you can see the slides as Minda was speaking?  Thank you very much.  All right.

Just as a segue and for the record, for the audio record, I'm going to read out the Article 4 and remind us all that this was written 10 years ago when the environment was still not considered an issue, let alone an issue for internet governance.  Article 4 of Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet reads thus, right to development through the internet, all UDHR Human Rights require economic, social, cultural and political development in order to be fully realized as recognized in the UN declaration on the right to development from 1986.  The internet has a vital role to play in helping to achieve the full realization of Human Rights, in particular in eradicating poverty, hunger, diseases and promoting gender equality and empowerment of women.  The right to development includes the full enjoyment of all rights related to the internet and set out in this Charter.  On the internet the right to development includes: 

A, poverty reduction and human development, information and communication technology shall be designed, developed and implemented to contribute to sustainable human development and empowerment;

B, environmental sustainability, the internet must be used in a sustainable way, thus as it relates to the disposal of eWaste and to the use of the internet for the protection of the environment.

Speaking to those very broad themes, giving us focus, con Civil society example, case studies and challenges and critiques, I would like to turn to our very first panelist, and I will simply let you have the floor.  I have a timekeeping device of an analogue nature which is an for example timer, and I will keep this running so that you can see me.  That's the 3 minutes.  Just the opening remarks will be 3 minutes.  Without too much further ado, I would like to introduce Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky, who is also representing our youth coalition, we're thrilled to have you here.  The.

The floor is yours.  And the for example timer now begins.

>> NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you for the introduction.  As mentioned, I'm the student Committee member on internet governance and I work as a data storage engineer at a top IT vender.  I thank you for the appreciation between the Dynamic Coalitions and to involve youth in this important discussion.  Youth are the main users of the internet.  They are digital natives and tech savvies, which gives the advantage to the tech giants to push the trend and the urge of buying their latest versions of smartphone, smart devices like watch, screens, gaming appliances.  Amid the pandemic, the need ‑‑ there was an increase in the need of accessing the internet and processing more devices for purposes like online indication, working from home, attending virtual conferences like this version of the IGF.  A family of two parents, two kids might need to have four laptops at home apart from the phones.

Ten years ago, owning one smart device might be called a luxury, now it can be called minimalism.  The number of mobile phones in the world is now larger than the number of people.  It is not carbon imposing the threat any more as eWaste is the elephant in the room.  On the other hand, youth are the frontline of environment and there is a big group of youth advocates from activist, engineer, entrepreneurs and others, a great example is Greta, a 16‑year‑old environmental activist who brought this important debate to high‑level policy discussions.

Another example is the youth for digital sustainability program which brought 50 young people to develop 1 messages as recommendations, my colleague Raashi Saxena will discuss further on this program in her remarks.

Under limited opportunities, if we create more room for youth in sustainable tech to create innovative solutions through encouraging the start‑ups ecosystem, organizing hackathons and encouraging private sector and governments to adopt creative ideas, their creative ideas, this is a step in the direction towards manufacturing ecofriendly by design devices I would recommend linking Article 4 with the Sustainable Development Goals like SGs 7, 9, 12 and 13 as none of the SDGs contain the words internet or technologies in them.

Thank you.  Back to you.

>> MODERATOR: Brilliant!  That was 3 minutes on the do the!  Thank you so much!.

Thank you for the recommendation which I know our Rapporteur will be noting immediately.

I would like to now give the floor to Hanane Boujemi, well‑known to our coalition and champion of the Arabic Farsi and Kurdish editions and a brilliant campaign in that region.

The floor is yours.

>> HANANE BOUJEMI: Thank you very much!  Good afternoon, everyone. 

My name is Hanane Boujemi.  I'm an ex Co‑Chair of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles, and at the moment I'm working for the African Union as senior expert on policy and regulation among other roles that I have different entities in the field of IG.

Thank you, Noha, for your contribution and I have to add that the IPC is a pioneer when it comes to predicting, projecting out to the future what could be the policy challenges that we face in the IG discussion.  Indeed, environment now is at the heart of our discussion already for the last two years but the Charter itself has already highlighted this issue, hand in hand with the right to development.  If you look at the Charter, you will notice it was already cited, the text, and also, and you can see that both actually go hand in hand.  During our discussion, we anticipate also that this text may need updating although the process is tedious and requires consensus among all members.  I think why we're having this discussion today, it is because, you know, the sustainability discussion is very much tied to how we actually promote views of the internet in various contexts.  Now, I have to say, you know, the developed world, you know, it is more or less consumed with the notion of consumerism and it brings us to, you know, the discussion whether we really want people to be technologically advanced but on the other hand, we're not looking at the offset of having a tech‑wired society.  This is where the genius of the Charter comes from, you know, the principle point of view, where we promote, you know, the right to development, and we say hey, this right comes with the responsibility of protecting the environment, which is I think a very important notion.  It is also interesting because when we promote the Charter, I still have many copies here in my office in many languages and we tend to lobby mainly policymakers to subscribe to this principle, it is a soft mechanism.  It is not a legally binding let's say provision, but it is a soft mechanism that would convince the policymaker, the government officials, different actors to actually believe in the principles we're promoting through this coalition.  To spread this in a society, we need a community like this, what we have on the call today, to spread the word about ‑‑ the word that we're doing because the principles per se are text, it is black on white, but how to actually mobilize, you know, people to believe in what we're saying and knowing that there is many theories when we talk about the sustainability of the internet or the environmental impact of the internet.  The uptick of technology globally makes this kind of thing hard to promote as a principle, but I think we need to do a little bit more effort into actually bringing the society into this conversations.  Obviously, the big tech giants either working in the hardware industry, you know, because the business model entirely relies on that, or you know providing tech services, you know, to communities all around the world definitely should be part of this conversation.  I was hoping that one of the giants could join us today to have this conversation.  All in all, as I said, I wanted to focus mainly on the principle and how important it is for us to incorporate other components, you know, that would reflect the very true meaning of sustainability using technology.

Thank you.

>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Thank you very much.  Thank you very much, Hanane.  Thank you. 

We have 62 participants, Michael will be keeping track of the chat questions and comments which I'll ask him to bring in at a later point.

The timer will now begin for Mr. Ilias Iakovidis ‑‑ excuse me if I got that wrong, I practiced! ‑‑ and Ilias Iakovidis, the floor is yours.  I will start the egg timer. 

Off you go.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everybody.  I will speak a little bit about the European dimension and what we're doing in the European Commission and our vision for Europe.  We have, as you know, declared that our goal will be to climate neutral Europe by 2050.  When we did that, we didn't really understand, and that was a year ago, what exactly is the role of internet and in this case, digital sector as a whole.  As we're growing into this realization, we have understood how important it is.  In the beginning, the digital transformation, it didn't really care much about sustainable transition and sustainable transition realized early enough that they will not be able to get there without the digitalization. 

Deeper we go, we understand that actually, even the digital transition, the materials behind that, all of the issues around the environment also needs the sustainability transition.  This panel brings a third dimension of SDGs beyond economic and environmental, but the social issues, and if we don't sign them up in a synergy way, all three will not go far.  Without all, we will not achieve green or digital transformation.  Each have their own risks, introducing inequalities and unjust ways. 

Just one example green environmental sustainability, it is becoming so urgent and so important that we may actually forget the social issues as we go rushing into sustainability measures.  An example could be that we just ‑‑ and mayors on a local, environment, they say there are no cars in the center of the town, only people with electric cars can enter the center of the town.  You can imagine how just this is as a statement.

The same can be for many other services that are polluting and people just suddenly say we will text this carbon in a different way and ‑‑ you know, unless we get the right mix of the social, the just transition, the green and digital, we will not achieve all our goals that we set ourselves for 2030 and 2050.  I want to give two examples of what we do.

We are looking at greening of the ICTs so actually we can deploy more.  If we really want to connect another billion of people, we need to make sure that this in this case deployment is done in a green jacket way.  What's it mean?  We need to look at two dimension, the energy consumption, but for that, as I already said in previous sessions, energy consumption, it is something that we can actually tame and together with the renewables we would be able to get there soon.  It is the material consumption and the eWaste and the pollution and reliance on the earth and the deployment of the natural resources that's the major problem for in this case.

If we have to choose, let's focus to make sure that SDG12 is the principle for in this case development, responsible consumption and production.

On the potential of the ICT, so if you leave the greening of ICT, which is ‑‑ we have a lot of actions in the commission, we have a lot of actions that we will take together with all of the Member States on how to green the ICT and we are starting with the obvious, data centers and Telecoms and we have the clarity of the device, and as we have seen, there was a mention about digital smartphone, smartphone, it is the problem of today.  We change them every two years.  They are huge eWaste because we don't recycle, less than 15% is actually recycled.  There is a growing number of reuse and refurbishment and it is nowhere where we should, the biggest problem is durability, recycling is the beginning of a bad thing, to keep the value of the devices as long as possible, that's the issue we need to solve, repairability we need to enable the right to repair and, of course, the design for durability.  The design is not yet there.

On the enabling part of ICT, ICT can enable a lot of good things but only if it is green jacketed as I said if we really pay attention, to what we do with the streaming, the energy consumption, the material consumption, the good things it can do in every sector you can imagine, agriculture, energy grids, transport, manufacturing, but what I would like to select, just for today, just to conclude, it is that there is a silver bullet for me what digital can do, that is the clarity of our economy at large, the circulatory of our economy at large, it is the solution to climate change, even if all of ‑‑ everything that we have in our economy runs on renewable, imagine that the world of 2030 will be 100% renewable, we have not reached sustainability.  The material problem of produced use waste, that linear way of consumption, it has to completely disappear if you want to be sustainable.  People just focusing on energy consumption has a blind eye to this.  Circular economy is something I want it highlight.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much.  We have a lot of content.  Thank you so much!  It is important that we have an intergovernmental organization such as the E.U. who have a policy degreed internet and you are keeping us honest.

Thank you.

We're now going to move to Mr. Rigobert Kenmogne from our coalition Steering Committee and from Cameroon.

And Rigobert Kenmogne, when you're ready, the floor is yours.

>> RIGOBERT KENMOGNE: Thank you.  Good afternoon.

My name is Rigobert Kenmogne, I'm from Cameroon.  I'm a journalist expert on ICT.  I work as a digital right programmer from Francophone Africa, my presentation will be focused to show how environmental sustainability on Human Rights work in South Africa, especially from our country context and at the end of my presentation, I will try to respond to questions to identify and proposing possible solutions to the negative environmental impacts of internet in the region.

As you know, in 19 years the mechanical vehicle, Africa has turned to a massive electronic devices for decades.  Over the past two decades, the process of Technology Transfer as gradually involved in view of the dangers of coalition of technologies, the African continent has in recent year, in the regulation, in the environment, pollution, generated by technologies and we can say that South African countries often classify as technologies emerge in rich numbers and this is often newly used products and it is a real problem of the physical and future environment, pollution, physical environment, it occurs so that it is often poorly understood and the dangers are poorly assessed.  Virtual pollution is often generated by interference and different electronic devices, poorly connected or having exited their life span.  It is important to regulate the address and the stabilities of the internet by focusing on the risk internet users face in using the technical tool at their disposal in order to ensure several macroeconomic environments.  The technical company of the internet, it is the first ‑‑ so it must present annual reports ‑‑ okay ‑‑ a general report on the situation, but also presenting the technological resourcability for the company on the environment.

Thank you.  Thank you for letting me share on the subject.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for that.  It is great to get that view from Africa, Francophone Africa.

Now I would like to move to the representative from the technical community, Vesna Manojlovic.

The floor is yours.  My very analogue timer will now begin now.

>> VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you.  Thank you.

I'm very grateful to be present here with all of you today.  Thank you for inviting me.

I work for RIPE NCC, the Network Coordination Center, we have three functions broadly, we are regional internet registry, so we distribute IP addresses to our members in Europe, Middle East, former Soviet Republics, and we maintain the database for those resources.  We're not‑for‑profit membership organization and located in Amsterdam.

We also are secretariate for the RIPE community, that's two different things with the same name.  It is very confusing.

We help to organize the bottom‑up development of the technical coordination of the internet infrastructure.  It is the engineers that maintain the internet infrastructure in the regions that come to discuss the things of their interest in an open forum and so you can all take part in meetings which are now online and also, the third thing, we are a neutral, trusted source of data.  We host the services that are benefiting the global internet community, for example, a name server, one of the 13 root name servers and the measurement platform, for example RIPE and the routing information service and we also participate in a lot of internet governance and other technical communities like ITF and ISOC.

Myself, I'm a community builder at the RIPE NCC, my job is to connect people and to cross connect different technical communities like hacker, activist, artist, feminists, with the right community.

One of my preferred tools for that, it is a hackathon, I was happy that Noha mentioned the young people and their involvement in hackathons.  I organized already many of them and we're still working on them.  Please stay in touch about this.

Originally, I'm from Yugoslavia, now that's ex‑Yugoslavia, but I live in Holland.

Today, what brought me here today is Michael, thank you for inviting me, and my interest in environmental justice.  I would like to help decrease the ecological footprint of the internet by influencing the technical communities to include sustainability and Human Rights goals into their practices.  By using the feminist principles of the internet, which are resistance, non‑violence and care.  I made certain suggestions for adding to the Article 4, which can be summed with growth of the internet must not be the reason for destroying the environment or harming the environment.  There are many more words, but my 3 minutes are up!  Thank you so much!

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Vesna!  Thank you!  I'll paste in your proposed Article 4C text and we can perhaps take a quick vote at the end.

Last, thank you so much.

Lastly, but not least, Raashi Saxena ‑‑ I'm not sure if I said the name right, forgive me if I'm not ‑‑ from the Youth Sustainability Coalition.

Welcome!  The floor is yours.  All 3 minutes of it, plus give or take!

>> RAASHI SAXENA: Thank you!  Hey, everyone.  I'm Raashi Saxena.  Good morning, good evening and good afternoon from wherever you are logging in.  I'm excited to be here.

As mentioned, I am one of the 50 youth working members of the digital sustainability policies that we have come out with and I also wanted to discuss that sustainability according to me is two sides of the coin, where one side is Human Rights aspect without neglecting the climate change aspect and as a lot of distinguished panelists before me mentioned, I think the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 can have the word internet and can have stronger motivations and visions and policies that incorporate the backbone of our future and we also see how the pandemic has exposed the social inequalities that people don't have access to a robust, healthy, sustainable internet.  I come from Bangalore, in India, we do have a lot ‑‑ we saw a lot of issues with children not having especially from rural areas and women not being able to work, going to ‑‑ everybody works on daily wages and the eWaste sector and the refurbishment secretary, it is a 23 billion‑dollar industry globally and we have policies in place in India that were put in place in 2016 talking about upskilling, providing economic incentives but I see something lacking and I would perhaps like to add to Article 4, it is that digital literacy, it is something that should be added.  We need to up skill people so that we can sort of make sure that the refurbishment and the eWaste industry are getting into sustainable practice, getting subject matter experts as mentioned in the policies and also not looking at diversity as a decorative piece or tokenistic, but looking at holistic measure, looking at Best Practices from other global emerging economies to make sure that that we are abiding by the principles of circular economy, making sure that working conditions in the industry are good and avoiding exposure to asset teaching and open air incarcerations and we have the refurbished smartphone market where we have each user has more than two smartphones perhaps and it grew by a healthy 9% last year and, of course, I can go on and on and on, but I think we need to ‑‑ we as youth, I'll end in the next 10 seconds ‑‑ we have to build legacies and also provide humane, and change in practices to make sure that this is a healthy and sustainability world.

That thank you so much.

>> MODERATOR: That concludes the first round of panelists.  I understand that there are two questions at least.  I think, Michael, are any of the questions in the Q&A, ones that our panelists could immediately answer based on the first interventions?  If so, could you read to us which one you think could be answered by a panelist immediately?

>> MICHAEL OGHIA: There was a really, really good question here that I'm quite curious about:  Is the Basel two convention, including eWaste followed by most countries and are countries using loopholes to dump this.  This may be really good for Ilias.  I don't know if you're familiar enough with the Basel 2 topic, would you be able to take that, does the mining community related materials such as silicon, but in this case, it refers to conflict minerals, tin, gold, et cetera, require controls for conflict mineral as there is in place for blunt diamonds.

I would answer that, but I open it to the floor as well.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. 

I'm sure you have comments on the issue around the Baldwin Convention, perhaps you can remind the meeting what that is and also about the ‑‑ yeah, the issue around blood, diamonds, blood metals.  I will put it bluntly, that's effectively what we're talking about, at the beginning of the life cycle of our beautiful phones.

3 minutes, the floor is yours.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: You don't have to answer the questions but feel free to respond.  Choke.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: I would have to take the ratification on Basel Convention by all Member States, in the past, we exported our eWaste to Africa, other countries and that is now forbidden.  Now we have our own rules on how to treat eWaste, it is getting difficult.  We have our own internal market issues, how to get the eWaste as fast as possible to recycling plants and how to get the value back.  I will come become on the Basil convention if you want, I don't think I have direct access now to all of this information, okay.

I just wanted to say that I see on the chat that a lot of people say, well, we keep our mobiles much longer.  That's true.  I do too.  I change them every 5 to 6 years.  We had asked people, how long would you keep your mobile, what would you like to do?  That's an old one, yeah!  And there is easily more than 67% of people that said we would like to keep it five years.  We're forced to change it because my application is not any more updated.  It is kind of the software updates, it is the performance issue, it is the screens, it is the batteries.  That's what we're trying to do and maybe look at it from legal point of view.  You just do regulation that phones like that should not be able to be sold in Europe.

This is one issue we want to check.

On ethical, let's say the social, the social and Human Rights issue with respect to mining, we are working on a concept called product passport for electronics for construction for plastics, for packaging, for textile, for other products where this information would be captured.  The supply chains, the Human Rights of the supply chains would be very transparent and visible.  At the moment, it is kind of we're flying blind, we don't know where it come, where it goes, there is system leakages, and I think the first regulation, if you're interested in these things, it's on batteries coming up in a few weeks from now.  I'm trying to make sure that I capture everything from supplies and the original materials all the way down to use and recycling and reuse.

Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much.

Also, if I could just touch on a point asking for people to respond specifically to this important issue on the hard materials, the precious metals and the actual devices as Ilias reminds us, it is not about recycling but about the problem of the business model that builds in this obsoleteness, and this is scored at the moment as we go online for learning, teach, work, it is all of the apps we have to download are now forcing us through business models and designs to upgrade whole laptop, whole PCs, forcing us to buy new devices in order to be able to run the latest commitment there.  It is a software, hardware kind of relationship that is not inevitable and Ilias, you reminded us there is an alternative always.

I would like if people ‑‑

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: If I can add now that we talk about this, I just want to make a very important point:  While we are talking that ICT is the dark side, the pollute, ICT is the only, if not the major solution to enable circular models product as a service.  Imagine in the electronics that we kind of pay for services rather than the materials and whoever gives us the material has all of the incentives for us to keep it as long as possible, it is an expense to them.  There are many other ‑‑ there agriculture, I explained this in agriculture, it is not about deploying digital as a goal, digital is there as a mean.  We need to kind of have a minimal principle of what we actually need as digital to change the business model.  I'll give you an example, instead of telling every farmer to buy a drone, GPS on the tract, subscribe to satellite imaging services and IoT in the soil, get a service to protect your plant health, and that service will kind of charge you per acre and that service will have the incentives to minimize the agriculture product, it is an expense to the company, the company will get digital because they have to have the satellite imaging, drones, IoT, all of the connectivity in place to be able to protect the field with a minimum expense, which is minimum application of pesticides.  You have healthy soil, healthy food, business models that work for farmers and the companies and this is the power of ICT that we need to promote and really make that realization.  Of course, it is good to do it always with a minimalist, kind of a ‑‑ what I call a green jacketed principle.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much.  Very important point.   .

Could we have ‑‑ I was just checking with our tech team, I understand that we can ‑‑ I know we can promote someone from the floor so that they can speak to the camera.  Rachel, was that still possible?  I believe that you have the controls.  If you wish to make a comment, please put hands up so we can promote you to panelists.  If you do want to intervene, please obey the for example timer.

Have our panelists have any comments directly to the issues of the materials, the supply chain issues and what Ilias referred to as the 360º in approach that the internet rights and principle coalition has been advocating and needs to be very, very visible 360º rather than a siloed approach.

>> RAASHI SAXENA: I would like to add to Ilias Iakovidis' point and look at the fact that there is no such thing as one‑size‑fits‑all.  That's important. 

Since the eWaste industry, the republished industry, they're informative and we have to look at testing and put in necessary regulations by actively involving civil participation and actually going through multistakeholder approach to see how we can make sure that this is going to be a viable business for people who are forced to go with obsolete smart phones that are not sustainable and have to be given up in the next year or so.  I do believe there is a lot of trial and error and we can't borrow exactly what one country is doing and we have to contextualize based on the social country context because secondhand items, they're still a taboo in especially India, especially given the virus at the moment, there is so much hysteria around it.  Yeah.  There is a lot of work to be done.

>> MODERATOR: A good point.   

I wondered if I could put to the panel and the floor, there is a danger here in these conversations that we kind of expect the Global South to recycle, share the technology and the Global North by the latest or the flip problem it is only the Global North that can afford it and anyone in the Global South that has a fancy new iPhone has their priorities wrong.  So I was wondering if the panel could perhaps address I think the question going begging a little bit, within the Charter, Article 4 ‑‑ I will let you have the floor in a minute ‑‑ in the Charter, Article 4, perhaps it is a bit pie in the sky and asking too much.  That's my question to us all.  How do we drill down, making this actually workable and I believe, could you identify yourself?  You have the floor.

Hello?  Hello.

>> (Poor audio quality).

>> MODERATOR: Diedre, you have a criticism, it is not about best but about good.  Personally I say why do we wait for second best here, I think the time ran out for us worrying about best, better, good, we're at the point where we're not even reaching the minimum threshold of our planet's survival.  I would like to throw to the panel what do they think is the most urgent thing that has to be done now within our 360º in approach.  It is often an accusation at the Charter itself, that it is trying to do too much and some say this should be added later it is Human Rights should not be in business cycles, models, supply chains. 

Anyone want to comment to that point?  The floor is open.  Panelists, I think Hanane Boujemi has had to leave.  I wanted to ask if she had anything to add.  Okay.

Anybody want to comment on these rather large issues?  I think we have to be quite self‑critical as well.

Would anyone like to comment?  Someone asked do we instead have to specifically target tech companies?  Yeah.  Yeah.  You would like to speak to the issue around who is ‑‑ please?

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: Can I maybe just break the ice first.

What I think we need kind of a triple offensive, of course it is too much maybe to ask for a panel but in the UN, there is enough agencies that could take a some of that.  One, to promote whatever is happening, the private sector to be green themselves.  We have to make sure that they themselves sometimes don't understand if they are green or not with that.  Try to get the private sector serious and agreed on some monitoring and calculations that are trustable, transparent, credible, so we can actually measure what are we doing with the technology with respect to sustainability and Human Rights.  Those are social issues. 

Second, to make sure that we commit at the highest level, the political, the politicians.  Now it is in the hands of ministries of environment, and I have seen that before.  I have worked for many years in ministries of health and if we keep it within cocoon, within the ministries of environment, it has no chance to really scale, it has to be a common issue of Ministry of Finance, economy, Prime Minister office, working with Germany we have to scale it to a chancellor, so in a way, it has to go high, this agenda, it can't be kept by one silo ministry policymaking.

The third, it is consumers.  How do we as UN through whatever agencies we have, to influence the consumer's behavior and to put it in a way, not ‑‑ you cannot, of course, tell people you should do that, but it would never go far.

Those that want to behave responsible, we should provide tools and guidelines on helping them with lifestyle choices.  Many people want a choice, how do we support them to carry that choice forward?

>> MODERATOR: Thank you for bringing up lifestyle, for hinger bringing that in the mix.  Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky.

>> NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: It is about creating a lifestyle for products and a commitment that's sustainable as well, not always considering the disposal of the devices.

There is also ‑‑ the market pushes for the private sector to go to be transformed digitally and to adopt digital transformation, but the ICTs have the solutions or the answer for this too, you don't have to ‑‑ businesses don't have to create or to build their own data centers while we have Cloud computing for example.

As like we have the issue, we have ‑‑ we have the ICTs, they offer the solutions as well.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  Yes.  Let's look at solutions, that topic can be overwhelming.  Before we do that, Raashi Saxena, would you like to take the floor?

>> RAASHI SAXENA: You know, I also wanted to kind of again echo in with what was said, all of the issue, rather the solutions that were brought up, they're action policy messages and the research we have done with 32 different youth stakers, and we have deliberated, seen, we have looked at the framework and this may sound a little too radical but maybe Human Rights issues and climate change, it should be bipartisan of an issue so that we don't stop the work or halt the work that other governments have been doing.  Yeah.  That's my only comment.

>> MODERATOR: Any other comments?  We have an interesting line on the chat about consumer led models.  My feeling is we're focusing ‑‑ it is a good thing ‑‑ not on so much the software but the hardware, the devices.  These are the things that we have talked a lot about software, data centers, the consumer consumption of energy and production of heat that adds to global warm, but today we're having an interesting conversation about these things that really are a part of our live, the wearable watch, the laptop, the tablets, particularly the smartphones which are just mini tablets basically and the fact that they're completely unsustainable in the long‑term.

I can give people speaking rights if they wish to.  I can actually just Rundown the list of participants.  If you want to speak to this particular topic, let me know now.  Panelists, any more kind of concrete ‑‑ how do we persuade people to let go of the latest model of the iPhone, if I may just mention one brand or the latest model of their Samsung tablet, just to be fair and to name another one, or not to update their laptop which is perhaps eight years old in my case.

Anyone wish to speak ‑‑

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: Kind of a minor issue, but now that we're all home, we're kind of through COVID teleworking, doing everything, what we could do, trying either public or private sector teleworkers, to help, to have one ‑‑ I have two laptop, my personal and I have my work laptop.  That's true for many teleworkers, just a simple solution would be could we actually arrive to a position because teleworking will stay with us, even after post COVID, we have a projection that 30% of people that telework now will stay, at least 30% will stay teleworking.  Can we support actually that we use the same device for work and personal?  We don't have to have everybody double, double mobile, double laptop, that's what we have today.

On the latest, I think that's difficult, that's kind of cultural and difficult to get into.  What we could do, support services that do not ‑‑ help the models that are there, not to subsidize the newest device, so that they keep you as a service.  Most of the companies now, they just subsidize the new brands just to get you to sign up to renew your subscription.  That's maybe not the best way to do it.  At the same time we are trying to see if we can get take backs, schemes, campaigns, people have three, four phones in their drawers that are sitting there, just for some maybe sentimental reasons because there is a picture of my kid on it, whatever.  If we can find kind of a trustable deletion of whatever personal data that's true for data centers as well, there are huge, thousands of servers from data centers being shredded because people don't trust that the data on them would be erased correctly.  We can imagine the waste just from that little untrust in the personal data story.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  Very important, concrete points.  Keep the examples going, everybody.  This is very informative as well.

Amber, are you okay with taking the floor?  You were speaking about consumer‑led models in terms of wearable technologies.  Great to have you back, Anna.

Amber, lovely to see you.  Can you unmute?

>> AMBER HILL:  Yeah. I was ‑‑ I was thinking about what Ilias was saying, whether you're an iPhone person, an Android person, and people have become either one of those people with work laptop, personal laptop, having an iPad, an Apple watch.  These technologies, they're so engrained within our lives and we can't not take away from how much they are, we pay money every month toward them, and that relationship could start to be redefined in a way where it can express sustainable goals in a way that you're responsible for that type of technology, you're responsible for ‑‑ in a way, in so far as it takes up a lot of energy and it takes up a lot of ‑‑ a lot of resources to get there.  In that way, you can actually provide ways that you can sustain it.  What I said about tech companies, they could ‑‑ they could have a refurbishment service like in the U.K. now, you're encouraged to recycle your phone and you will get significant discounts.  It needs to be in a kind of consumer‑led model because that's what's going to work.

>> MODERATOR: Consumer led but how do we get the consumers to lead?

>> AMBER HILL:  I think you have to define it.  It is a big one, isn't it?  I found what you were saying about the global north, Global South, I think that's an interesting one.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Amber.  Thank you.

Anyone wishing to speak to this?  I think that we need to at the moment, we are struggling between the governmental responsibility, corporate responsibility and the point that maybe it is down to the individual and on that point, I think you had your hand up.  Lovely to see you here.  Thank you.

>> LEANDRO NAVARRO:  I don't know if you know about the electronic watch, we talk about consumers, and corporate consumer, puck like procurement, they're able to do that and this is an interesting example and about the use, I think it is difficult to ask people to do efforts but we can ensure that the devices, they're not second‑hand used and that can be worked together with social enterprises, for businesses, they give, sell, primarily at a lower price for other users which may enjoy the device if you don't any more.  Of course, I mean, there is the abandonment of countries that produce the devices, don't forget about them, it cannot be that they abandon the devices and they do not maintain the software, hardware and other parts and also the software updates.  There are many things where we can really act, it is urgent to do it.

>> MODERATOR: I agree.  It occurred to #metoo, most people keep old devices in a box, in a cupboard, under the bed, there are many funny scenes of wires, cables, if we put all of our different antique devices together, but there is nowhere to go to take the old devices.  There is some law for our local governments, city governments and it should not be just seen as charity, it should be seen be an absolutely crucial.  It is not just behavior, it is perception.  Someone noted in the chat about perception.

With that segue, any comments on this?  I think if we don't mind sipping on this particular aspect, how we actually get the link between behavioral change and the opportunity to change your behavior.

>> VESNA MANOJLOVIC: There is one aspect which springs to my head, that's the free software, the opensource software, it is a connection between empowering the users to reuse their equipment because they can and on the other side, government mandating that the public procurement for software which is being used in public services should be open and free so that there are no companies that are actually keeping people hostage for the upgrades and so on and it is complex, it is difficult to achieve, but it is worth considering.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  Any other comments on this particular point?  A new point that someone would like to raise.

We have only 15 minutes.  I would like us to have some wrap up takeaways from our panelists that were invited and have time to consider this proposal from Vesna in particular, added to by Raashi Saxena to create what we call a first protocol, protocol one for Article 4 of the Charter, namely to ‑‑ namely in protocol 1 to add an addendum, mainly Article 4 clause C and clause D I think.

Before we get there, any other comments on this issue between making it possible for people to see reuse as enabling and empowering rather than not ‑‑

>> VESNA MANOJLOVIC: That's only possible with the government really doing a lot of education, awareness campaigns, it is really how the messaging is done and, of course, you also have different sectors like Civil Society that bring in their expertise and talk about how perhaps the opensource community can talk about the advantages and look back on history, but I still feel that the government has a really important role in making sure that the economic incentive, they're highlighted very deeply because if you do have economic incentive, then you can hold the citizens accountable in terms of, say in India, we have environmental duties and then people perhaps would then be inspired to sort of take practices.  There is a lot of behavioral economics and science that perhaps we can apply and perhaps we as a community have programs like this and maybe something wonderful will come out of this.

>> MODERATOR: To remind the meet, our Article 4 was ambitious enough ten years ago, and it is still remaining ambitious, the right to development, it is actually part of what the internet technology is supposed to do and implicit in that Article 4 is the sense that internet technologies are actually hindering development, namely poverty reduction, they're actually a source of unsustainable forms of consumerism, production lines, all of that sort of thing.  In fact, these technologies, they're contributing to the environmental degradation rather than sustainability.

With that in mind, I have put on the chat the proposed additional clause, just before I ask our panelists to give closing remarks.  That's a draft text which could foreseeably be our first protocol, namely clause A, poverty reduction, human development, clause B, environmental sustainability, clause C along the lines of the usage of the internet for the protection of the environment must be balanced with protecting the environment from the growth of the internet and then she has a slightly shorter version.

I would like to put that forward for us to think about before we wrap up.  With that, whether the meeting feels that could be put for wore was a draft text.  Still broadly written, but this is the magic so to speak of these sorts of declarations and Charters that they need to be able to go past the next 5 minutes.  Thank you for the professional drafting already, Vesna.  Without too much Firth ado, I will start backwards.  Are you still with us?  I will ask the panelists to give us a less than 3‑minute take away, 1 to 2, maximum three concrete points you want to table for the meeting as our final takeaways because we need this as part of the protocol for being in this environment.

I'll start with our final speaker, with Raashi Saxena.  Would you like to give us your concluding 1 to 3, no more than, three concrete comments.

Thank you.

>> RAASHI SAXENA: I think perhaps maybe I could give comments on the existing clause.

>> MODERATOR: Whatever you want to do.  It is up to you.

>> RAASHI SAXENA: (Poor audio quality) maybe there could be something that we could have perhaps a multistakeholder approach and have youth participation.  We are the most active citizens, per se, and may also add a little bit on supply chains and talk about standards on how to clean the internet, bring about ‑‑ not really bringing about the SDGs, but perhaps talking about the circular economy.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.

>> RAASHI SAXENA: I would add digital literacy and upscaling as points on the gender aspect, quality perhaps you could be mention inclusion, diversity, digital inclusion, it is something that's really important.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.

That's all important.  That fortunately is covered in other Articles of the Charter, but I think we're on to something very interesting here.

Thank you.

Vesna Manojlovic.

>> VESNA MANOJLOVIC: I feel like I already have said a lot and I typed in a lot to the chat.  I would like to have even loftier goals.  I don't know how to phrase them!  Some mentioned protecting the environment, but I would rather say respecting the environment and going for the environmental justice rather than just sustainability.  That's my final words.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much.  I think that's on the record.  Thank you.  Aim higher!  Aim higher!.

Thank you.

Rigobert Kenmogne.

>> RIGOBERT KENMOGNE: Thank you very much.

As conclusion, I think the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition should develop a strong advocate for interference for better organization under government to respect environmental practices around internet freedom, digital rights, also this is a good exercise, it would be good to join other actor, digital innovator, NGOs, it is good advocacy to share the guideline for all and to Friday to respect and verify the internet on technology, it will give us the best nature of the next 100 years of our life.

Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

I like that timeframe as well.  We have less time than 100 years to worry about, I think 100 ‑‑ if we get to the next 100 years, we're doing well.

Thank you.

Ilias Iakovidis.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: I'm thinking more what we can do for others other than the others for us.  What you as a group behind the Article 4, you could actually go and implant ideas in other discussions around UN or beyond.

For example, there is a big discussion on AI, social issue, Human Rights issues on AI development.  We could add the dimension of the environment, because the deep learning, it is very polluting, one algorithm just in the training phase of a deep learning is ‑‑ it is kind of equivalent to five cars' lifetime emissions.  AI, there are computationally and environmentally friendly ways to teach AI to be smart.  This has to be taken, the way ‑‑ the social issues are taken into account and Human Rights, we have to implant the environmental issues.  There is a lot of examples on circulatory, about environmental issue, we have to go back, remind these people that this will not go far unless the social issue, Human Rights are taken in.  I would say that this group, it is the one that is a 360 going to the discussions and completes the dimension that's missing that's one thing.

Second, we should remind governments that there are green public procurements that are voluntary and unless we really make it very visible, loud, that that it cannot be ignored, that they should , do there are huge IT projects around the world.  There are huge IT projects that are procured by public money.

>> MODERATOR: Sorry, who was that speaking just for the record?

That's okay.

Just checking.

Could you continue?

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: Okay.

So basically, there are things that you can make to be difficult to ignore because they're ignored at the moment.  It is not because of lack of regulation or standards, they're basically ignored, a role you have to do, put it high on the level of the agenda so that it cannot be so ignored and we have in the E.U. already green public procurements for data centers, so we can tell a country that wants to install a data center what is the green way to do it, we can ‑‑ we have it for desktop, laptops, public offices, others that want to buy computer, thousand do it in a green way.  That's a huge knowledge that's not being used.

The last, if you could also be a little bit of an observer, I don't want do any difficult observatory infrastructure and resource incentive things, but if you could set up a Wiki putting this knowledge on worldwide access to this basic awareness, that's a good start.  You will be surprised how people are innovative to translate that into action.  Let's enable a bottom‑up idea by at least making the world aware on the large scale, we have our own European but we're just Europe and you can go much more beyond.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you.  To remind U we have a wiki, a core wiki based on the European dialogue for internet governance Plenary session that we developed in July so that work is already beginning.

I think Hanane high school to leave.  That leaves us with Noha, we have 3 more minutes to go for concluding comments.

>> NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you.

I would like to recommend combining both statements B and C in one statement after simplifying it.  My takeaways are promoting a shared responsibility amongst all stakeholders, open the doors for innovation, innovative solutions and I can't recall the last one.

I will say whenever I remember it.  Thank you!

>> MODERATOR: Thank you!  At this point, I would like to suggest, if people could indicate just with the chat, I would like to suggest the following, that the concluding comments from our six speakers be added as outputs for the meeting, they're all clear policy points, and secondly, that the protocol 1 text either clause B separately and clause C or as suggested to combine them, to be put forth as an output, a draft output, the first protocol 1 for Article 4 of the Charter.  Does the meeting agree?  I would like to end with a very brief show of hands.  Why not!  We'll not lower any hands.  Just put plus 1, #metoo, just to get a sense so that our wonderful Rapporteur June, can we put it on the meeting?  To repeat, all policy comments, at least from the speakers and all others that we can glean are put together as our output and the second one that we put forward the draft protocol 1 namely, clause 4C and possibly D.

Thank you, keep going.

We have one more minute according to my clock.  Only room for accepting, no, you can just say minus 1, if you don't mind, you don't have to say plus, you can say 0.

It just to get a sense.  Or you can say abstain or only legal votes count, all votes are legal in this setting.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: You're making fun of our American friends.

>> MODERATOR: I'm not making fun!

>> NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: I wanted to add what I had forgot, building trust with tech with software and hardware by making them sustainable by design.

>> MODERATOR: Yes.  Sustainability by design, which is to rip off privacy by design which is championed by the Council of Europe and is a European mantra.  Yeah.

>> ILIAS IAKOVIDIS: We have a history behind the design, there is also a long history of accessibility by design and inclusion by design.  We can follow those footsteps on the sustainability by design.  It is not the first time that we're trying to squeeze something in the design.

>> MODERATOR: This thank you so much.  360º in means around the clock, around the compass.  If we're all happy, I would like to end this wonderful session.  We have an enormous amount of material.  Is someone copying and pasting the chat box now just so we have a real record.  If someone could do that.

I would like to thank our speakers for your professionalism, for your expertise, for your extraordinary amount of knowledge.  I have read an enormous amount, thank you for all of the attendees, and at this point, I would like to declare this meeting closed.

I wish you a happy, safe Friday, Namaste, be safe, be well and join the coalition and enjoy the rest of the IGF online and don't buy the latest model of your iPhone or your tablet!  Yet f just to think about it really concretely!  Think twice!  Thank you so much!  Good‑bye, everyone!  Bye!