ITU symposium highlights need to make technology a key part of the climate change solution

Montreal meeting to focus on ICTs and environmental sustainability

Geneva, 12 April 2012 – The seventh ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change aims to advance the ‘green ICT’ agenda by raising awareness of the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to aid in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Organized by ITU and the government of Canada, and hosted by Prompt, an R&D partnership developer, the symposium will explore the many ways in which advanced technologies can play a role in improving the environmental sustainability of the ICT sector itself, how ICTs can help countries better manage the effects of climate change, and new strategies to help tackle e-waste.

With ICTs now an intrinsic element of every economic sector, the need to integrate ICT-based solutions into the climate change actions of each industry has become essential. The symposium will explore ways of achieving this integration, and will help plot the course of ITU’s future work in the field – whether it be using radiocommunications to monitor and analyze shifting climate patterns, developing new technical standards detailing best-practice application of green ICTs. The event will also form part of ITU’s activities in the lead up to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), highlighting the key role played by ICTs as enablers in environmentally-sustainable economic development.

Full event details and programme can be found here.

What:                                  Seventh ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change

When:                                  29-31 May, 2012

Where:                                 Headquarters of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Montreal, Canada.

Why:                                    Top-level delegates will identify possible goals, commitments and modalities of ICT sector commitments to be developed in the process leading up to the 2012 ITU World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-12) and United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD 2012 or Rio+20).

Public-private partnership will be emphasized, as will the need for cooperation and collaboration between the environmental and ICT arms of national and regional administrations.

Who:

Leading specialists from the ICT and environmental protection fields; from top policy-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators and standards experts. Journalists wishing to attend should mail toby.johnson@itu.int.

Montreal’s ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change is the seventh in this series of events, with previous Symposia held from 2008 to 2011 in Kyoto, London, Quito, Seoul, Cairo and Accra.

More information on previous events is available here.