EARTH DAY: Digital Technology’s role in achieving the UNs Sustainable Development Goals
Highlights
Digital technologies drive positive progress across the 22030 agenda in four key ways:
Connect and communicate, opening up relationships, information, ideas and opportunity;
Monitor and track the world around us, so that our impact is transparent and we can make targeted interventions
Analyse vast swathes of information; optimise processes, procedures and resource productivity and predict where we need to intervene; and
Augment our human abilities and autonomate systems to carry out activities on our behalf by creating an ’active bridge’ between the physical and digital worlds.
As part of celebrating 2023 Earth Day, it is a good time to reflect on the role digital technology has in achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are part of the international agreement, The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted among United Nation (UN) members to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.
Digital technology has made a profound impact on society, the economy and the environment. It has made our world smaller and facilitated a more connected global community. It has increased international trade and economic prosperity through productivity growth.
In 2019, Deloitte and the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) released the Digital with Purpose: Delivering a SMARTer2030 report1 which states that digital technologies drive positive progress across the 22030 Agenda in four key ways:
Connect and communicate, opening up relationships, information, ideas and opportunity;
Monitor and Track the world around us, so that our impact is transparent and we can make targeted interventions
Analyse vast swathes of information; Optimise processes, procedures and resource productivity and Predict where we need to intervene; and
Augment our human abilities and Autonomate systems to carry out activities on our behalf by creating an ’active bridge’ between the physical and digital worlds.
Some of the practical applications of digital technologies that are contributing to achieving the SDGs include: 2, 3
Promoting work and financial inclusion by enabling services such as mobile banking and micro-crediting and by giving access to markets for small producers and their products (SDG 1)
Giving farmers direct access to market information, weather forecasts, logistics and storage to help increase yield, restore soil, reduce waste & improve productivity (SDG 2,14)
increasing access to information to reduce inequality and increase inclusivity, regardless of gender, ability and/or location. For example, health workers to health information and diagnostic services. Analytics can help healthcare professionals make projections about diseases and to enable the effective management of diseases and health practices (SDG 3,4, 5, 10)
ICT makes smart water management possible. Optimizing operations, delivering better and loc-cost maintenance as well as less carbon-intensive products and services contributes to sustainable management and supply of water and modern energy (SDG6, 7, 11, 13)
The Deloitte & GeSI report also suggests that while digital technologies will contribute to meeting many of the SDG targets, performance against approximately a third is expected to deteriorate even after increased technology adoption due to the increased growth in the total ICT sector emissions footprint between now and 2030.
Join ACS Canberra as it celebrates Earth Day on Thursday 27 April 2023 with a session discussing initiatives on infrastructure and cloud utilisation to lower the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of technology. It’s not too late to register for the virtual event.
1. https://gesi.org/research/download/36
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