IGF 2021 Lightning Talk #54 The Key Role of Internet Governance in Building a Global Climate Accounting System

Open Earth Foundation
Katherine Foster, Chief Strategist Open Earth Foundation Sherwood Moore, Linux Foundation, Co-Chair of the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group

Speakers

Martin Wainstein: Director of the Open Earth Foundation and Lead Scientist of Yale Open Lab Tom Bauman: Founder of The Climate Chain Coalition, The Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, The Adaptation Ledger, Digital MRV, and ClimateCHeck Katherine Foster: Chief Strategist Open Earth Foundation Sherwood Moore: Co-Chair of the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group, Linux Foundation - OS Hyperledger

Onsite Moderator
Katherine Foster
Online Moderator

Sherwood Moore

Rapporteur

Katherine Foster

Format

Presentations, Discussion questions to engage attendees with, Q&A

Duration (minutes)
30
Language

English

Description

Information technology and internet governance are critical to helping humanity meet the goals of the Paris Accord and address the existential threat of climate change. In order to achieve net zero global carbon emissions by 2050, an open and transparent global Climate Accounting System is needed to balance climate actions with carbon emissions across all global stakeholder groups including governments, business, investors and civil society. This information must be tracked and rolled up from the project to company to state to country level in order to manage resources to meet this global challenge. Internet Governance is needed to contribute to developing the shared protocols, standards, and open platforms needed for a globally integrated climate accounting system to be operationalized. Work is currently underway as stakeholders have begun to explore how to leverage new technological advances in blockchain, big data, IOT, AI, smart contracts, etc. to create a new ecosystem of collaboration designed to link the climate system, climate assets, climate markets, climate finance and climate agreements and their actors together towards a unified goal of net zero carbon emissions.

The Open Earth Foundation, the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG), and the Yale Open Climate Project invite you to learn more about the challenges of building a Global Climate Accounting System and the key governance questions that must be addressed. This will be an interactive session where attendees will be engaged to discuss how to:

Increase awareness and proactiveness among policymakers and developers about the need for and benefits of a Global Climate Accounting System: How do we ensure that technology developers, digital corporations, policy makers and policy processes understand the important impact that a shared layer of digital, interoperable climate data can help global stakeholders work together to combat climate change?

Educate attendees how a global climate accounting system can help support a shared source of data-driven truth from which humanity can measure impact by improving the assessment, measurement and monitoring the impact of environmental actions.

This will be an interactive session where attendees will be engaged to discuss how to:

Increase awareness and proactiveness among policymakers and developers about the need for and benefits of a Global Climate Accounting System: How do we ensure that technology developers, digital corporations, policy makers and policy processes understand the important impact that a shared layer of digital, interoperable climate data can help global stakeholders work together to combat climate change?

Educate attendees how a global climate accounting system can help support a shared source of data-driven truth from which humanity can measure impact by improving the assessment, measurement and monitoring the impact of environmental actions.