Information

Outcome of the 6th ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change (International Telecommunication Union (ITU))
ITU organized the Sixth Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change on 7-8 July in Ghana. The event was hosted by the Ministry of Communications (MOC) of Ghana. The main purpose of the event was to move forward the agenda on using ICTs to monitor climate change, mitigate and adapt to its effects and, in this light, identify future requirements for ITU?s related work ? including standardization of ICT equipment and networks as well as development activities. The symposium concluded with a Call to Action addressing climate change and the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17-CMP7), to be held in Durban, South Africa in November 2011 and for the first time sustainability and the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD 2012 or Rio+20).

Green Standards Week - Call to Action (International Telecommunication Union (ITU))
ITU and the Ministry of Economic Development of Italy organized the first Green Standards Week from 5 to 9 September 2011 in Rome, Italy, hosted by Telecom Italia. The Green Standards Week brought together leading specialists in the field, from top policy-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others. The main purpose was to raise awareness of the importance and opportunities of using ICT standards to build a green economy.

ITU, together with the European Commission, organized a workshop on Methodologies for Environmental Impact Assessment of ICT examined work underway to measure the impact of ICTs on climate change and how to standardize the way to calculate the reduction of GHG that ICTs have. The workshop ended with a call to action to make the ICT sector more sustainable.

From WSIS to Rio+20: The role of ICTs in sustainable development and the green economy transition - Highlights of the Discussion (International Telecommunication Union (ITU))
As the preparatory process for the Rio+20 conference progresses, the global community has been called to provide inputs to facilitate discussions and, particularly, to promote synergies between existing processes and mechanisms from the international community, such as the WSIS process. A prominent example of the contribution that WSIS can make to Rio+20 is the progress achieved in the implementation of Action Line C7 (AL C7), e-environment.

The facilitation meeting for AL C7, e-environment was an interactive debate among key stakeholders involved in the implementation of this action line along with experts from the sustainability community and the Rio+20 process. The guiding principle of the discussion was to identify how ICTs can help to move forward the sustainability agenda, allowing developing countries to leapfrog to a low-carbon development model. The document contains the conclusions of the event.