Ericsson, which ranked
second on the newly released Cool IT Leaderboard,
has played an important role in bringing
awareness of IT climate solutions to the
negotiations in
Cancun. In the lead-up to the climate conference,
Ericsson exerted significant leadership
to unify the sector’s message to government.
The product of these
efforts to date is a 4-page document signed
by over 40 companies and global organizations
representing more than USD 1 trillion of
revenue, which expounds IT’s commitment
to provide solutions that build a low carbon
global economy.
The Guadalajara Declaration,
as the text is named, was presented yesterday
at a round table with environmental ministers
from South Africa, Mexico, and India. Ericsson’s
CEO Hans Vestberg spoke via Telepresence
from Sweden, as did Luis Neves of Deutsche
Telekom, chairman of GeSi, the organization
that produced SMART 2020.
The Declaration states
the need for transformative solutions and
urges governments to use IT solutions to
reach emission targets. It lays out six
broad policy asks for government:
1.Recognize and make full use of solution
sectors (such as ICT), that through their
products and services can help provide solutions
which can significantly reduce emissions
in order to avoid further climate change
and support adaptation.2.Support the creation
of a work stream with focus on transformative
low-carbon solutions from solution sectors
(such as the ICT).3.Support a global low-carbon
ICT and broadband workshop to be organized
under the auspices of the Global e-Sustainability
Initiative and the Broadband Commission
for Digital Development and supported by
regional workshops.4.Recognize solutions
with transformative potential in the negotiating
text, for example, in the areas related
to mitigation, the technology mechanism,
technology development/transfer and adaptation.5.Support
the development and adoption of an agreed
methodology for calculation and reporting
of the positive impacts of solutions that
companies provide (including transformative
ICT and, increasingly, broadband solutions).6.Include
ICT solutions in National Mitigation/Adaptation
Plans and share best practice.
Other Leaderboard companies
to sign the Declaration include Cisco, HP,
Microsoft, Nokia, Intel, and Wipro.
Greenpeace supports
the asks laid out, and welcomes the sector’s
increased focus on its role to engage governments
on how IT solutions can help deliver more
ambitious emission targets. While the text
successfully provides a more unified message
and a much clearer framework for policy
advocacy, the specifics of its policy asks
and recommendations need to quickly become
more concrete if they are to be useful to
governments.
The Declaration will
hopefully provide a solid precedent for
collaboration between the IT sector and
government, which must ramp up in the coming
year to increase policy makers’ education
about IT solutions and their role in climate
policy. The IT sector must continue to build
relationships with government and quickly
look to how it can have an effect on other
national and regional climate and energy
policy decisions.
The following is an
interview with Elaine Weidman, Vice President
of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility
at Ericsson. It is the second of our series
about IT company involvement at the UN climate
conference in Cancun, Mexico.
Jodie Van Horn: Why
are you attending the climate negotiations?
Elaine Weidman: We’re
here to raise awareness of the role that
ICT can play in helping to create a more
low carbon economy.
JVH: What does the IT
sector need to do now to have its solutions
better understood and be looked to by governments
as an essential part of the policy making
process?
EW: I think the biggest
challenge for the ICT sector is not actually
getting its act together within the sector.
We’re doing that now. You can see time and
time again how companies are getting their
own act together on the 2% of emissions,
and are also starting to move more actively
in the area of the 98%.
I think the big challenge
is actually getting the message of ICT out
to governments and other leaders. And even
to other sectors. It’s really when you start
getting into cross-sectoral discussions
that there has to be an incentive. And the
incentive needs to be commercial. So I think
there’s a lot of work now, between sectors,
in trying to find viable business cases
to bring these transformative solutions
to market.
And when it comes to
governments, I think this is where we need
the help of NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF,
to evangelize that message. Even if we have
had great success today with launching the
Declaration, it’s still a side event, and
the technologies are still not being acknowledged
as part of the whole [UN] process. I would
say this is a challenge. There is still
too much focus on the heavy polluters and
high carbon emitters and not enough focus
on companies that can bring transformative
solutions.
JVH: Is Ericsson working
with clean tech or other sectors, such as
renewable energy partners, to drive a united
policy ask that can stand up against a well-funded
negative lobby?
EW: When it comes to
the lobbying issue, I guess we haven’t been
as active as some of the other sectors because
we really haven’t had a lot to lose. We’ve
only seen opportunities in the climate area.
But I can say that I’ve been working on
this Declaration for the last six months,
and this has taken an enormous amount of
my time to pull together. It’s been hard
enough to get the work done within the sector,
so to think about renewable energy and other
sectors is really important, but I think
we have to take step one.
It’s a platform to start
from. It’s a position. We put down a baseline.
We said: “This is where we are today. We
want to engage.” Companies representing
USD 1 trillion in revenue are represented
in this declaration, and we want to have
a voice. And I think that that’s the first
step. There are many sectors that have transformative
solutions, and if they want to engage, they
are certainly welcome. The more companies
that put forward their transformative solutions,
the better we will all be.
JVH: What is the next
step? How do you hope the Declaration will
have an impact?
EW: We need to get ready
for Q1 after the holidays. What the South
African Deputy minister said is so important.
He said, "We will create an opportunity
for you in Durban to showcase your work,"
and he said, "The work needs to start
in 2011." The Mexican climate change
ambassador was on target as well. He said,
"Don’t wait until Durban to plan a
side event that nobody will attend. Go to
where industry events are already happening."
We have some pretty big industry events
coming up, like Mobile World Congress in
February, and lots of others as well.
JVH: Which other governments
have been supportive and do you have a plan
for reaching out to more governments on
this issue?
EW: We were very lucky
because Patricia Espinoza agreed to distribute
the Declaration to all of the delegations
that were here. They should have received
them today. That shows tremendous support
for public-private dialogue. And there’s
been fantastic leadership on behalf of the
Mexican government to incubate this over
the last few months. But when we come to
the end, we needed a hand it over to keep
the process alive, and that’s where the
South African government stepped in and
said, "We’ll take this. We really want
to include the private sector." During
Q1 we will need to have a follow up. I need
to go back to the other stakeholders here
and see how to do this.
JVH: What’s the goal
for COP17?
EW: The goal is to start
to get governments to integrate ICT into
their national development plans, into their
infrastructural strategies. The COP is the
COP, but the real work needs to happen on
the policy level. There’s got to be an integration
of environmental policies where governments
are out setting environmental targets together
with their ICT ministries, which are out
setting infrastructural plans.
The ministries and policies
have to be more integrated, because that’s
where you can get scale and that’s where
you get a diffusion of the technologies
and services. We can provide the technology,
it exists today, but in order to get people
to use it and encourage a more sustainable
lifestyle, that’s where the governments
have a huge role. They need to start to
educate people on how to use the technology
and play a role. That’s the goal for me
anyway.
We can come to the COP
and it is of course an extremely important
place where we need to come to a climate
agreement. But also we need to work at the
national level to make sure that governments
know what’s available to them. And I feel
it’s actually a moral obligation that we
use the technologies that exist today. Why
are we talking about [Carbon Capture and
Storage]? It’s 15 years out before it’s
going to scale. We have this technology
today. We just need to use it in a smarter
way.
