Session
Organizer 1: Sarbani Banerjee Belur, Spoken Tutorial project, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Organizer 2: tâmara terso, INTERVOZES
Organizer 3: Reyna Ubeda, International Telecommunications Union
Organizer 4: Shawna Finnegan, Association for Progressive Communications
Speaker 1: tâmara terso, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 2: Leandro Navarro, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Nevine Tewfik, Government, African Group
Speaker 4: Mike Jensen, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Sarbani Banerjee Belur, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
Reyna Ubeda, Intergovernmental Organization, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Shawna Finnegan, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Round Table - Circle - 90 Min
Reducing impact: How can we achieve a net zero impact on climate change of the further expansions of the Internet and its infrastructure? How can Internet standards, governance and policy choices, and standards for device design, development and manufacture, contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of the Internet (e.g. through the adoption of green computing, energy efficient servers and machines/processes, and by policy contributions)? How can we further use digital technologies to better predict and manage the impacts of climate change?
Additional Policy Questions Information: How can we reduce the negative impacts of the Internet and its infrastructure by supporting community-led paths to sustainable digital transformation? How can communities leverage digital transformation to respond to intersecting social, economic, and environmental crises in the digital age, and meet their needs in the present and future?
The proposed session will explore how communities develop shared values in response to their specific communication needs, identify opportunities and creative solutions, and respond to challenges in leveraging digital transformation for sustainable development, including in access, control, and ownership over internet infrastructure. Invited speakers will reflect on policy and regulatory challenges and opportunities to enable community-led paths to sustainable digital transformation.
1.4
9.4
9.b
9.c
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
11.4
11.5
11.a
11.b
12. Responsible Production and Consumption
12.2
12.5
12.8
13. Climate Action
13.1
13.b
Targets: The proposed workshop will explore community-led paths to sustainable digital transformation that cross-cut the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainable development.
Invited speakers will reflect on community-led paths to address the economic dimensions of sustainable digital transformation linked to Goal 1 to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, including to ensure equal access to basic services and control and ownership over appropriate new technologies (1.4), and build resilience and reduce exposure to climate-related extreme events and other social, economic, and environmental shocks and disasters (1.5).
Linking to Goal 9 to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation, invited speakers will reflect on how communities identify sustainable solutions to meet their needs for connectivity, including through repair and reuse of materials and components. This discussion is also linked to Goal 12 in responsible production and consumption.
Invited speakers will also reflect on how communities harness digital technologies to raise awareness and take urgent action in response to climate change (Goal 13) and to make human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (Goal 11), promoting collective action and adaptation based on shared values and goals.
Description:
Participatory governance in communities allows to engage in digital transformations that can generate their own paths towards sustainability, autonomy and self-determination. This workshop at the global IGF will explore how community development and provision of digital technologies and digital transformation can enable us to respond to intersecting social, economic, and environmental crises in the digital age.
Participants in this workshop will be invited to consider the specific mechanisms and processes related to digitization in communities that contribute to sustainable development. Invited speakers will reflect on their experiences in the development and governance of internet infrastructure, and how sustainability is identified and understood as a shared value.
Communities are highly diverse in terms of their goals and strategies for managing, sustaining and operating digital infrastructures, services and applications. This diversity is rooted in contextual realities that are essential to understand and respond to crises related to the coexistence and respect to people and nature. Sustainable development at the community level responds to immediate and future needs based on shared values and goals that are defined by community members.
This workshop aims to identify models, processes and tools that build awareness of the role of communities in digitization that respond to their contextual realities and generate paths towards environmental, social, and economic sustainability. An expected output of the session will be the creation of a process for defining, sharing and incorporating sustainable practices into local digitization, collaboratively developed across communities and regional and global supporting organizations.
The session will be organized as a round table discussion that brings together invited speakers and registered participants online and on-site to discuss community-led paths to sustainable digital transformation.
Before the session, organizers will share resources and questions through social media using a session hashtag and invite participants to share their reflections and contribute to discussion in advance and when they join the session virtually and on-site. Moderators on-site and online will work together closely to prepare for the session and ensure that interactions, questions, and discussion from on-site and online participants and speakers can be efficiently managed.
Usage of IGF Official Tool. Additional Tools proposed: We intend to use social media platforms before, during, and after the session to increase participation and engagement in our discussion of community-led paths to sustainable digital transformation. We will identify a hashtag to help facilitate and curate the discussion through social media, and invite diverse participation in the development of a process for defining, sharing, and incorporating sustainable practices into local digitization.