During its first-ever virtual event, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), one of the United Nations' specialized agencies, called on the U.N. to include information and communication technologies (ICTs)—including virtual meetings—in its efforts to fight global warming.
Held last month, the ITU event, the Virtual Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change, attracted 500 remote participants from approximately 50 different countries, with speakers and moderators from China, India, Korea, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Its purpose, according to ITU officials, was to demonstrate the important role that ICTs can play in combating climate change, and to advocate for the inclusion of ICTs in the Copenhagen Agreement, a global text on climate change that's currently being prepared by the U.N. for discussion and approval by world powers during a special meeting in Copenhagen later this year.
"Information technologies contribute 2 to 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But they can also reduce emissions in other sectors by at least 15 percent," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said during the ITU symposium. "This means they can be significant [...] in our fight against climate change."
According to ITU, virtual events like its September symposium are especially important because they represent "a new—and green—era of international events, offering many of the benefits of physical participation without the environmental costs."
"By harnessing the power of ICTs we have saved hundreds of tons of CO2," Malcolm Johnson, director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said during the ITU symposium. "When we consider that every week there are international conferences involving thousands of participants, virtual events such as this would have a huge impact on emissions."
When it's signed in December, the U.N.'s Copenhagen Agreement will give nations guidelines for setting and meeting environmental goals that reduce the impact of global warming. Although it's unclear what if any specific guidelines ITU is advocating, the agency has said, at the very least, that it wants "the critical importance of ICTs recognized in the final text."
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