1. Key Policy Questions and related issues:
How to reconcile environmental sustainability technological innovation and ensure that these are harmoniously intertwined with human rights frameworks in order to achieve the SGDs?
How can the Internet Governance community in general and the IGF in particular create spaces for cross-sectoral collaboration to accelerate the development of rights-based and environmentally sustainable Internet technologies?
How can consumers, individuals, communities, and institutions be encouraged to consider the environmental impact of their own internet access and use habits?
2. Summary of Issues Discussed:
The discussion focused on the interconnections between human rights, environment and Internet connected technologies and looked into concrete steps to achieve an effective multi-stakeholder collaborative effort to ensure human rights and sustainability by design.
The speakers agreed that only concerted solutions resulting from multi-stakeholder collaboration could lead to effective change and that more needs to be done to promote dialogue and shared experiences, but that spaces, such as the annual IGF and the NRIs already exist to foster this dialogue.
The panel reflected upon the causes that are currently hindering cross sector collaboration – since the solutions and the skills for a sustainable ICT already exist, but are scattered among the different stakeholder groups – and highlighted issues of culture, values, and priorities. In particular, they highlighted the lack of accountability and the failure to take responsibility, which leads to masking problems rather than solving them. Also stressed was the scattered and unclear information on sustainability, the lack of a concerted strategy of repairability, and the reliance on a business model that promotes rampant consumption and product obsolescence, which forces consumers to waste their existing and perfectly working products by replacing them for new ones. This scenario is leading to ever growing demand of consumption and of e-waste generation and the use of precious natural resources that not only have a huge negative impact on the sustainability of the planet, but also on the full enjoyment of human rights with disastrous consequences to populations affected by the scarcity of their natural resources, affected by the hazards of e-waste, or working in degrading conditions to provide the raw materials needed for the ever growing demand of production of new technologies.
7. Reflection to Gender Issues:
Gender was not explicitly covered, but was referenced via the adverse affects of the lack of sustainability built into the design of ICTs on the environment and human rights. All speakers, minus one, were also women.
