Events

We are facing planetary crises with additional pressure from the current pandemic. The incremental strides we are making towards the SDGs is not enough. The much-needed systemic change to reach all SDGs and its planetary boundaries needs to happen at speed and at scale.

West Asia Region is no exemption to the environmental risks driven by so many factors such as climate change, conflicts and human migration among others. Digital Transformation (DT) can play a powerful role in enhancing our state of knowledge and accelerate decision making towards more sustainable solutions and actions in managing these risks. This shift however, towards digital economy is not something new. Over the years we have seen a trend of growing internet traffic. In 1992 we were sending back and forth around 100 gigabytes per day. This year we’re averaging over 100 thousand gigabytes per second and these transactions will grow exponentially in the coming years. And as it grows, so does the amount of data being generated.

Digital Transformation Conference for Environmental Sustainability 

Perspective from West Asia

The scale of challenge against the backdrop of planetary crises is insurmountable. Its impact on people and the planet is happening faster than the speed of interventions on the ground. Post 2015, Data Revolution for the SDGs called for data literacy. It paved way for an increased capacity in harnessing information, as well as technical and statistical data that allowed for more data-driven and science-based decision-making. This new access to data, however, presents both challenges and opportunities on how we make use and process this available resource in real time to ultimately deliver a net-positive impact on the environment and on our society.

The year 2020 is a pivotal year for the planet - it has been saddled by the pandemic and has affected so many lives and economies. But despite this, it is also declared as the Decade of Action to galvanize ambitious actions to deliver on the Goals by 2030. This means accelerating innovative solutions to address the most pressing issues where it matters when it matters.

The Digital Transformation Conference for Environmental Sustainability, convened by UNEP’s West Asia Office, will explore clean technologies, digital tools and applications that can be adopted in the West Asia region to tackle the three planetary crises – climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

Further, it aims to translate ambitions into real commitments and collaboration from all stakeholders, making use of the best scientific and technological innovations to address pressing global and regional environmental challenges at SPEED, SCALE and IMPACT.

Climate Change
The West Asia region has seen an increase in CO2 emissions over recent decades, as a result of growing total energy consumption. This is not only linked to population size and economic activity but is also heavily influenced by energy fuel mix and water and electricity use efficiency. West Asia countries are therefore particularly vulnerable to several natural hazards, from coastal flooding to temperature increases, sea level rise, droughts and desertification. This segment of the conference will discuss digital means that enhance transparency around climate change, air quality and health risks to catalyse public pressure for action.

Nature and Biodiversity Loss
In West Asia, there are prevailing anthropogenic pressures in the form of urban expansion, pollution, overconsumption of biological resources beyond the region’s biocapacity of ecosystems, and modification of habitats. These pressures put biological resources at risk, resulting in a number of critical challenges to biodiversity and causing further biodiversity degradation. The session on nature and biodiversity will explore related digital tools and big data analytics that are used to monitor, value and predict risks to natural capital.

Pollution
Influenced by the desert dust, coupled with anthropogenic emissions, in particular from historical and current waste practices as well as from the Energy, Industry and Transport sectors, West Asia countries are facing the consequences of health and climate change emissions at the cost of their inhabitants’ present and future livelihoods. The level of air pollutants in this region has increased progressively over the past two decades, contributing to premature death. The pollution segment of the session will explore the full potential of clean technologies and digital applications that can be deployed to reduce waste and pollution.

URL:

https://www.unep.org/events/conference/digital-transformation-conference-environment-west-asia