The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) defines four fundamental shifts that are required for a sustainable digital future: Align digital capabilities’ values with those of sustainable development; Ensure inherently sustainable digitalization; Direct and incentivize innovations towards digitalization for sustainability; and remove behavioral barriers to digitalization
This will require a purposeful commitment by governments and a widespread collaboration across the ecosystem between innovators, industry, academia, policymakers, and governments. The mobilization of capital for new technologies for sustainability startups should be a regional priority, using digital technologies to align capital with sustainability.
In the digital age, consumers also have the power to influence choices, demand sustainable products, and advocate for sustainable actions
Finally, across the spectrum, it must be remembered that there are wide disparities across West Asia; improving internet access for vulnerable groups, including women and the illiterate, and closing the gap in wealth, gender, and education with the help of digitalization remains a priority.
Sustainable digitalization is attainable, and West Asia can set the pace. This report makes ten calls to action.
Digitalization and sustainability should be linked to national digital strategies to maximize potential and benefits and promote pathways to channel digital transformation towards sustainability. Policymakers need to steer digitalization towards fostering environmental sustainability, taking the urgent challenge of climate adaptation into an opportunity to make West Asia more resilient and lead in sustainability innovation. Environmental sustainability evaluation and monitoring should be part of any significant digitalization project design.
The region needs a vibrant technology ecosystem that supports growth of technology for sustainability. The ecosystem can pool unique capabilities, data, consumers, research centers and industry knowledge to bring together many collaborators to join forces to create digital innovation across the region. It can also foster the Arab entrepreneurial spirit and create employment opportunities for the youth interested in tech for sustainability. Innovation ecosystems foster entrepreneurship, capital, research and education, and corporate innovation.
A regional network of collaborative Innovation Hubs could help accelerate the development, deployment, and scaling of digital technologies to build sustainability and solve environmental challenges. These hubs would help build urban and rural environmental action and opportunities to support sustainable livelihoods, resilience, and human well-being. To offer the funding and incentives necessary to promote green digital solutions and transformative innovations for sustainability, capital mobilization must act as a catalyst. The ecosystem should attract the best companies, startups, investors, researchers, policymakers, and future shapers, with a vision to create the future in tech for sustainability.
The area must encourage transparent co-creation and open collaboration between the public sector, the private sector, and civil society in order to support crucial digital innovation ecosystems. This ecosystem can be built around the sustainable industries of the future, helping navigate shifts and prepare for sustainable digital opportunities.
The ecosystem will need a supportive regulatory environment, including legal, regulation, incentives, innovation, and intellectual property laws. The regulations should also ensure that they involve and support those at risk of being left behind, especially the indigenous people, women and girls in terms of access to knowledge, incentives and other resources for sustainable digital infrastructure.
Digital skills and literacy will be the key to digitalization for sustainability. The Public sector and policy makers need to understand the environmental opportunities and risks of digital transformation. Computer scientists, entrepreneurs, and software engineers should also account for their products and services’ impacts on sustainability to consider in the design process. They need to understand sustainability challenges, especially decarbonization, dematerialization, detoxification, and economic circularity.
The green economy will require new skills. Academic curricula, trainings, and professional organizations must be upgraded to reflect the demands and outcomes of digital sustainability. A skills pipeline of those with domain experience is required, as well as computer scientists and engineers, and those who can manipulate energy data and understand environmental models. Digitalization for environmental sustainability will create new job categories, ranging from algorithm bias auditors to content creators to meme designers to drone fleet managers
Young people own the future and preparing them for a digital future, mobilizing them as influencers for sustainability should be part of the regional DNA. Building entrepreneurship is an essential pillar and finding ways to stimulate nascent entrepreneurs and give them access to innovative settings where they can share ideas with other innovators.
Appropriate structures and mechanisms for green finance can help bring great opportunities to the region, expected to reach $2 trillion in economic growth and over 1 million jobs by 2030. Green finance can accelerate the region’s goals of economic diversification and job creation, and attract foreign investment if properly structured. This requires adoption of sustainability guidelines. Establish new green investment institutions, strengthen capital markets, and establish or participate in standardized and transparent environmental performance reporting mechanisms. The endgame is to increase capital available for the development of sustainable solutions, products, and services to improve the environment (CODES 2022).
There are two aspects to this, sustainability in technology development, and sustainability in technology digital transformation’s implementation. Designing, for example, involves deciding which energy efficient programming language is used, whereas implementing has to do with how the technology is used. Technology can help map the sustainability of supply chains and risks to economies. Accurate and real-time data on carbon emissions, carbon assets, and carbon footprint can enable planning and accountability for the private sector. Using digital technology to align capital towards sustainability, integrate environmental and climate considerations into costing models, and conduct risk assessments and due diligence reviews to improve the environmental, social and governance (ESG) enables transparent measurement of performance.
Finally, influencing consumer choices on sustainability using algorithms and digital platforms to help make sustainability the preferred choice for online customers. The ecosystem will also help develop a platform of regional efforts to deliberately curate and design digital influence strategies as a technology powerhouse for sustainability that key influencers can have a say in. The ecosystem platform can also run entrepreneurial contests and hackathons, which may help entrepreneurs get seed capital that can help them in financing their startups and inventions.
Users under the age of 18 make up one-third of all Internet users, and young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are the main cohort of Internet users. (ITU 2022). They can lead the consumer demand for sustainability. The power of social influence and engagement is a vital complement to sustainability actions. Algorithms and digital platforms can help make sustainability the preferred choice for online customers. New digital technologies can enable companies and consumers to track the environmental and social impacts of their products. Storytelling through captivating videos across all channels is key to getting a message across to today’s young people.
AI, machine learning, robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT) allow the quantification of circular business models which is key to increasing resource efficiencies and reducing waste. Through efficient resource utilization, manufactured commercial and industrial products are more economic and environmentally friendly (Chauhan, Parida and Dhir 2022). Countries work on preventing e-waste generation, adopting necessary legislation and policies such as EPR and E-waste specific ESM strategies, improving e-waste treatment facilities, and raising awareness on the issue.
The wide disparities across the region highlight the need for investment in basic digital infrastructure like access to electricity, and communications (mobile and internet). In remote areas, solar panels and off-grid energy production make access possible. Utilizing digital services and data platforms to enhance collection, production, and management of data, mobilize research to fill knowledge gaps and improve the consistency and transparency of data used in countries’ nature status, land-use, and development planning. The use of voice activation for reach is essential, and its rapid expansion for digital interaction provides substantial opportunities. Voice activation could have a significant influence on people who are affected by digital exclusion, have low literacy levels, and/or disabilities.
As the West Asia region urbanizes, it will need smart and sustainable cities. By integrating technology into city services, smart cities can improve energy efficiency, urban infrastructure operations and transparency, road network resilience, water distribution system efficiency, wastewater management, and security of digital transformation increase (International Telecommunications Union – Telecommunications [ITU-T] 2019).
Open access to data can help promote environmental sustainability through i) data timeliness: helping governments leverage data from open platforms like social media to act on the most up-to-date information (e.g., images of floods or disasters) ii) accountable data governance: allowing people to have access to government data helps enhance transparency and involve the population in monitoring the governments’ actions towards sustainability, and iii) data inclusiveness: ensuring that data is available to all and that no one is left behind in taking action and responsibility for sustainability. Open data policies would help governments make better decisions, encourage wider use of society data, and find the right partners to drive positive change.