There are three key environmental crises that are uniquely challenging for the West Asia region, these are the climate change crisis, the pollution, and waste crisis, and the biodiversity loss crisis (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP] 2020). As home to a significant concentration of the world’s oil and gas production, many West Asian countries have built their economies and development plans based on these resources (Al-Hemoud et al. 2019). This has also left an unsustainable legacy where the overexploitation of natural resources induces environmental degradation, pollution, water insecurity, and food insecurity (D Atoufi and Lampert 2020).
Digitalization will be crucial to addressing these crises and in achieving the SDGs by 2030. It is estimated that achievement of 70 percent of the SDG targets can be accelerated through digital technologies (Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability [CODES] (2022). Digital technology has the potential to support countries in West Asia to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 13 – Climate Action, SDG 15 - Life on Land (Mondejar et al. 2021) as well as cross-cutting goals such as SDG 5-Gender equality. A key challenge is data and UNEP estimates that round two-thirds of the 93 environmental-related SDG indicators do not have adequate data for West Asia (UNEP 2019). This report draws on multiple sources to create a picture of the regional challenges with regards to the available basic digital infrastructure inside the region, and its potential positive and negative impacts on the environment at the regional level.
This report is a call to action for policymakers in West Asia to lean in and embrace the opportunities of digitalization for sustainability. The report provides a state of digitalization in West Asia and details how technology is being used to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and the opportunities to scale these technologies. It outlines rapid digitalization’s negative impacts on the environment. Finally, the report discusses the opportunities to benefit from sustainable digitalization. Finally, it presents ten “Calls to Action” for West Asia to take the lead globally in digitalization for sustainability.