Building cross-stakeholder awareness and understanding of the direct and indirect environmental impacts of digital/Internet technologies and how to mitigate them – WS 04 2023

20 June 2023 | 16:45 - 17:45 EEST | Auditorium A1
Consolidated programme 2023 overview / Workshop 4

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Working title: Environment and sustainability in digital development
Proposals: #56 #57 #65

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Session teaser

Building cross-stakeholder awareness and understanding of the direct and indirect environmental impacts of digital/Internet technologies and how to mitigate them

Session description

Internet-connected technologies are an integral part of our lives, but their deployment and operation also have a significant environmental impact. As governments and other stakeholders have grown more aware of this impact, greater priority has been placed on the need to address it, via regulation or other means. But effective mitigation requires an informed understanding of the technologies and interactions involved.

This workshop will bring together key participants involved in a number of different technologies - data streaming, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing - that are at different levels of maturity, commercialisation, and adoption. The session will discuss the challenge of governance as it relates to the environmental impact (particularly energy consumption, but also considering other indirect drivers like mining for rare earths) of these technologies, and what different stakeholders can do (and are doing) to develop strong awareness, understanding, and cooperation towards practical and effective mitigation strategies.

Format

Brief introduction from the three key participants, followed by an open discussion.

Further reading

• The AI Footprint: Measuring the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence compute and applications, OECD
• Qubits For The Kids: Realizing a sustainable quantum internet for the smallest/future researchers
• Greening of Streaming “Low Energy Sustainable Streaming” (LESS) Accord

People

• Celine Caira, OECD
• Dom Robinson, Greening of Streaming
• Vesna Manojlovic, RIPE NCC

SME

• Minda Moreira

The Subject Matter Experts (SME) support the programme planning process throughout the year and work closely with the Secretariat. They give advice on the topics that correspond to their expertise, cluster the proposals and assist session organisers in their work. They also ensure that session principles are followed and monitor the complete programme to avoid repetition.

Focal Point

• Chris Buckridge
• Vadim Pak

Focal Points take over the responsibility and lead of the session organisation. They work in close cooperation with the respective Subject Matter Expert (SME) and the EuroDIG Secretariat and are kindly requested to follow EuroDIG’s session principles

Organising Team (Org Team) List Org Team members here as they sign up.

• Emilia Zalewska
• Rainer M Krug
• Amali De Silva-Mitchell
• Katrin Ohlmer
• Michael J. Oghia
• Gianluca Diana
• Paolo Gemma
• Nadia Tjahja
• Steven Setiawan

The Org Team is a group of people shaping the session. Org Teams are open and every interested individual can become a member by subscribing to the mailing list.

Key Participants

• Celine Caira, OECD
• Dom Robinson, Greening of Streaming
• Vesna Manojlovic, RIPE NCC

Moderator

• Patrick Penninckx, Council of Europe

Remote Moderator

Trained remote moderators will be assigned on the spot by the EuroDIG secretariat to each session.

Current discussion, conference calls, schedules and minutes

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page. Please use this page to publish:

• dates for virtual meetings or coordination calls
• short summary of calls or email exchange

Please be as open and transparent as possible in order to allow others to get involved and contact you. Use the wiki not only as the place to publish results but also to summarize the discussion process.

Messages

Workshop organisers are asked to assign a reporter and provide the messages after EuroDIG in form of 3 (max. 5) bullet points.

Messages should:

• relate to the particular session and to European Internet governance policy
• be forward looking and propose goals and activities that can be initiated after EuroDIG (recommendations)
• must be in (rough) consensus with the audience.

The messages should be agreed on at the end of the workshop to make sure the audience is in consent. The Workshop Org Team has one more week thereafter to gather feedback via the EuroDIG Commenting Platform and to finalise the messages.

Video record

Will be provided here after the event.

Transcript

Will be provided here after the event.