Sustainability projects encompass a wide range of initiatives aimed at promoting environmental, social, and economic health and well-being. These projects can vary greatly in scope and focus, addressing different aspects of sustainability.
1. Environmental Conservation Projects.
1.1. Reforestation and Afforestation. Planting trees to restore and expand forest areas.
1.2. Wildlife Conservation. Protecting endangered species and preserving biodiversity.
1.3. Water Conservation. Implementing techniques for efficient water use and protecting water resources.
1.4. Waste Management. Recycling, composting, and waste reduction initiatives.
2. Renewable Energy Projects.
2.1. Solar Energy Installations. Setting up solar panels for clean energy generation.
2.2. Wind Energy Farms. Harnessing wind power through wind turbines.
2.3. Hydroelectric Power. Utilizing water flow for electricity generation without depleting resources.
2.4. Biomass Energy. Using organic materials for energy production.
3.2. Urban Gardening and Farming. Encouraging food production in urban areas.
3.3. Sustainable Fisheries. Implementing practices to maintain healthy fish populations.
3.4. Permaculture Design. Creating sustainable and self-sufficient agricultural ecosystems.
4. Green Building And Infrastructure Projects.
4.1. Eco-friendly Construction. Using sustainable materials and practices in construction.
4.2. Energy-efficient Buildings. Improving insulation, lighting, and heating/cooling systems to reduce energy consumption.
4.3. Green Urban Planning. Designing urban spaces that promote environmental health and connectivity.
5. Community Development And Education Projects.
5.1. Community Engagement Programs. Educating and involving communities in sustainability practices.
5.2. Sustainable Livelihood Initiatives. Creating jobs and businesses that contribute to the local economy without harming the environment.
5.3. Educational Workshops and Campaigns. Raising awareness about environmental issues and sustainable living.
6. Climate Change Mitigation And Adaptation Projects.
6.1. Carbon Sequestration Initiatives. Projects aimed at capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
6.2. Climate Resilience Planning. Preparing communities to adapt to climate change impacts like sea-level rise or extreme weather events.
7. Corporate Sustainability Initiatives.
7.1. Sustainable Supply Chain Management. Ensuring that products and services are produced sustainably.
7.2. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs. Initiatives by businesses to contribute positively to society.
8. Transportation And Mobility Projects.
8.1. Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure. Developing charging stations and other infrastructure for EVs.
8.2. Sustainable Public Transit Systems. Enhancing public transportation to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
9. Waste Reduction And Recycling Projects.
9.1. Zero-Waste Initiatives. Strategies aimed at minimizing waste generation.
9.2. Community Recycling Programs. Encouraging and facilitating recycling at the community level.
10. Water Resource Management Projects.
10.1. Rainwater Harvesting Systems. Collecting and storing rainwater for various uses.
10.2. Sustainable Water Treatment. Implementing eco-friendly water purification and treatment methods.
Each type of sustainability project addresses specific aspects of sustainable living and development, contributing to the overall goal of creating a more sustainable and resilient world. These projects can be implemented by governments, NGOs, corporations, communities, or even individuals committed to making a positive impact.
Over the past day, explicit deepfakes depicting pop star Taylor Swift naked have gone viral across social media, accruing tens of millions of views and highlighting the alarming pace at which AI-generated fake pornography is proliferating online.
The images first gained traction Wednesday when a now-suspended verified account on Twitter successor X posted an array of convincing nude depictions of Swift. The post quickly amassed over 27 million views and 260,000 likes in the first 19 hours before the account was removed. However, during that extensive window, the images had already been shared, saved, and reposted exponentially across the platform.
By Thursday, new deepfakes continued to appear, many targeting the singer’s high-profile relationship with NFL player Travis Kelce. Searches for “Taylor Swift AI” also began trending in some regions, further boosting the content’s visibility.
Independent organization Reality Defender analyzed the images and concluded they were likely AI-generated, quite possibly using a platform like Microsoft Designer which has gained notoriety for enabling easy creation of fake nudes. The actual origin remains unclear, though identifying marks suggest they may have first surfaced on an infamous website focused on nude celebrity deepfakes.
Regardless, their meteoric spread across social media once again puts tech companies on the spot when it comes to the policing of such manipulated content. Both Twitter and successor platform X expressly prohibit nonconsensual synthetic media in their guidelines. However, critics argue this policy has failed to translate to decisive action, as AI-powered fake pornography has continued to slip through the cracks.
A Persistent Problem Despite Restrictions
This incident echoes similar events from recent months indicating that social platforms are struggling to control the spread of AI-generated fake porn. Last January, a 17-year-old actress sounded the alarm about convincing nude deepfakes of herself permeating X despite her reports. Likewise, an NBC investigation last June uncovered a wave of graphic deepfakes focused on TikTok stars active on the platform. Only after contact from the media did X remove a portion of the flagged content.
The latest case further illustrates the glaring gap between rules and enforcement, even with such high-profile figures involved. Swift’s fans notably took matters into their own hands, flooding hashtags associated with the deepfakes to make them harder to find. However, such campaigns are no substitute for more assertive moderation from companies like X themselves.
At its core, the episode underscores how AI image generation has greatly outpaced social platforms’ abilities to monitor manipulated media. Services like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion do prohibit pornographic outputs of public figures. But many alternative apps harbor no such restrictions, democratizing deepfake creation to an unprecedented degree. Detecting and managing this content at scale is a steep challenge for even well-resourced organizations.
Compounding Difficulties for Understaffed X
For X in particular, the context points to especially precarious vulnerabilities. The company has weathered months of criticism for enabling misinformation around sensitive global events like the Israel-Hamas war. European regulators currently have the platform under investigation for potentially illegal content and disinformation.
Former moderators also allege that under new leadership, the company drastically reduced its human content oversight, instead hoping its algorithms would suffice. Whether accurate or not, this week’s Swift deepfake bonanza does not signal promising results from any automated approach. If anything, it has showcased AI’s ability to produce harmful fake content outpacing any existing capability to catch it programmatically at scale.
While AI generation marks a novel threat, the core incentives propelling normalized deepfake porn also persist. The Swift incident has sparked yet another wave of toxic gendered harassment from critics attacking her support for Travis Kelce’s athletic career. As long as demand exists for nonconsensual intimate media to intimidate women in public life, supply will respond in turn.
For X, the episode makes clear that any aspiration to remain an open global forum has urgent implications around AI governance. Advanced generative models like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion foreground policy questions about how to police manipulation risks at huge volumes. But companies aspiring to guide public discussion must also recognize longstanding real-world harms that new technologies stand to amplify exponentially if left unchecked. Any platform enabling hundreds of millions of views of nonconsensual fake porn has shown itself utterly indifferent to those much more basic human concerns still waiting to be addressed.
By: Mary Rose Oh Originally published at: goswifties
After the slump and surge of the pandemic, we must again harness trade’s capacity to support growth, employment and sustainable development.
Since the 1990s, trade has been a critical engine of prosperity; retooled for the future, trade can serve society and revitalize the global economy.
Among the 6 priorities that should guide us is the need to recognize the value of the world trading system and reaffirm a need for multilateralism.
Trade powers productivity. It is an engine of innovation, driving knowledge spill-over and technology upgrading. It can encourage improved governance and institutional reform. ‘Slowbalization’ has held back trade since the mid-2000s. After the slump and surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must again harness trade’s capacity to support growth, employment and sustainable development.
The alternative, trade deterioration, risks current prosperity. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and others have calculated that the direct cost to global output from trade fragmentation and technological decoupling could reach 8-12% in most-affected economies. US-China trade skirmishes have already led to significant trade diversion and income losses. A more uncertain environment depresses economic growth by reducing consumer confidence and spending, and removing firms’ reasons to invest.
The lower prices and consumer choice that come with trade help low and middle-income consumers. Trade is estimated to have reduced household consumption costs in advanced economies by two-thirds for low-income households, compared to one-quarter for high-income households. Deglobalization has potentially serious inflationary consequences.
Nonetheless, one lesson from the pandemic we must not ignore is the need for greater substitutability in inputs and increased diversification through trade. We must take “re-globalization” to heart.
Trade barriers and trade gains
Today, emerging markets play a far larger role in world trade than two decades ago. Trade in services has also seen healthy growth. Trade costs in services have traditionally been far higher than for goods, but thanks to technology are dropping more quickly. Still, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports average services trade barriers of over 170% in tariff equivalents in emerging markets and 80% in advanced economies. Services trade barriers are becoming ever more significant given structural shifts towards growing expenditure on services relative to goods.
Trade-war tariff increases aside, traditional tariff barriers to goods have become relatively minor direct impediments to trade, outside of some significant exceptions, particularly in agriculture and developing economies. However, the administrative burden of trade procedures and processes remains high – together with shipping and logistics costs, 50% higher in emerging markets compared to advanced economies.
Climate change and technological development are altering competitive advantage and with it the political economy of trade. Trade needs to support the imperative of climate change action yet at the same time resist unhelpful protectionism. As new policies are introduced, governments need to assess their cross-border impact and cooperate to keep trade open. Trade policies are currently biased against the environment through higher tariffs and other barriers on cleaner industries.
6 trade priorities
As we approach the 13th Ministerial Conference of the WTO, six priorities should guide us:
First, we need to recognize the value of the world trading system and reaffirm the need for multilateralism. This multilateralism must be pragmatic – enabling willing WTO members to move ahead in open plurilaterals and creating space for broader and deeper regional trade agreements – without dismantling the inclusive approach of broad non-discrimination.
Second, we need to find an equitable way through the industrial transformation needed to decarbonize the global economy and resulting from 4IR technology. The economic transition must be collaborative.
Third, we need to ease the day-to-day conduct of cross-border trade, services and investment, particularly through the deployment of technology.
Fourth, given the explosion in e-commerce and digital trade, we need to build trust through transparency and effective regulation.
Fifth, social and environmental outcomes must become a more acute priority in global value chains, with regulations, incentives and corporate behaviour aligned to ensure better results for workers, communities and nature.
Sixth, a larger role for developing nations, accelerated by foreign investment and domestic reform, will not only empower more of humanity but strengthen global resilience through diversity.
Meetings and initiatives
The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos provides an opportunity for trade ministers, business, unions and other stakeholders to agree on how to concretely advance these priorities. In preparation, trade, investment and geopolitics dialogues have helped executives and policymakers share insights and increase joint understanding of today’s realities. Cross-industry research is highlighting the value at risk from fragmentation. In the digital trade space, regional work is helping stakeholders improve policy design to improve the trade-offs between policy interventions and resulting costs.
The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation has now delivered over 20 public-private trade reform projects in developing countries, with initial savings exceeding $65 million. Over 1,000 local micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises have been involved with over $10 million direct business contributions. Similar practical reform initiatives are progressing across investment and services facilitation in several African, South Asian and Latin American economies, including for digital foreign direct investment.
Overwhelmingly, effective solutions depend on the deployment of new technology. The TradeTech initiative is catalysing collaboration across the entrepreneurial, investor and supply chain technology ecosystem to accelerate the emergence of scalable trade innovations.
Trade, labour and Indigenous communities are proposing legislative and business model changes to better serve workers in global supply chains and to improve access to the benefits of trade for Indigenous Peoples and disadvantaged communities. The Coalition of Trade Ministers for Climate, launched last year in Davos, promises to help countries put in place green trade policies, spur green investment and responsible circular trade.
There can be no recovery without a trade recovery. Trade tensions threaten growth. Over the last 30 years, trade has been a critical engine of prosperity. Retooled for the future, trade can serve society and revitalize the global economy.
This article was published as part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 discussions.
By: Børge Brende (President, World Economic Forum) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
The concept of “Food is Medicine” (FIM) dates back to antiquity, with the writings of Hippocrates emphasizing the deep relationship between food and health. Image: Unsplash
Food-is-medicine is resurging globally as a viable means to combat chronic conditions and social health determinants.
Public health reforms and innovative start-ups are playing a key role in driving Food-is-medicine’s wider adoption.
However, significant funding and a paradigm shift is required to make the role of food in holistic healthcare solutions a key feature of societal wellbeing.
The concept of “Food is Medicine” (FIM) dates back to antiquity, with the writings of Hippocrates emphasizing the deep relationship between food and health. However, in scaling global food production to feed a rapidly growing population at the turn of the 20th century, food itself was separated from its connection to health. The reasons for this detachment are manifold, rooted in economic incentives, industrialization, the advent of chemical pesticides, and cultural homogenization, among other trends. The growth of Western medicine, which approached health in a more siloed way compared to Eastern traditions, has also contributed to this bifurcation.
We detail these challenges as well as our strategies for driving multi-stakeholder cooperation in our recently published Insights Report Transforming the Global Food System for Human Health and Resilience.
As the repercussions of our dietary choices become increasingly apparent, it’s imperative to address the root causes of this crisis. Amidst the challenges, the concept of FIM is experiencing a resurgence, driven by several compelling factors. Noteworthy among these are public healthcare reforms, including new “value-based” payer models and the enablement of innovative pilot programs at the US state level to trial nutrition-based interventions. A greater understanding of the social determinants of health, as well as their corresponding societal health disparities, is also driving health systems to consider Food is Medicine interventions. These, along with other trends, are supporting the growth of food-based nutritional interventions to treat diet-sensitive conditions, improve well-being, and advance health equity.
Today, a swath of innovative private sector startups have emerged to address these needs in parallel with community organizations. Funding for FIM startups has witnessed remarkable growth, with $2.5B allocated to startups of the $8 billion in committed private funding from the Biden Administration’s Conference on Hunger, Health, and Nutrition. While the World Economic Forum and its partners are investigating nutrition-forward business models and other opportunities for public-private collaboration outside of the clinical nutrition space, the Food-is-Medicine ecosystem remains the strongest market opportunity to elevate nutrition. We stand on a paradigm shift where food will once again be our medicine.
What is Food is Medicine (FIM)?
FIM represents a solution pathway to resolve several issues. This includes:
Addressing the prevalence of chronic metabolic conditions, acknowledging the high contribution of nutrition and diet to chronic conditions.
Tackling the lack of support for social determinants of health, primarily through mitigating the downstream impact of malnutrition/undernourishment on the healthcare system.
Addressing the dearth of institutional payer support for nutrition insecurity—especially among low-income populations among whom chronic conditions are more prevalent.
Finally, FIM solutions in tandem with non-traditional payer models address the need for preventative and otherwise holistic care models in a highly fragmented and siloed Western medical system with short-term incentives.
Several trends are now coalescing to support the growth of nutrition-based treatment models. The existing growth in health and wellness has been accelerated post-COVID-19: increasingly informed consumers now have unprecedented access to their health data through wearable technology, AI tools, and digital nutrition and lifestyle tracking technologies.
Additionally, GLP-1 agonist drugs have hit the market, which have yielded substantial behavior changes regarding the volume and mix of foods people eat, with -10.1% Total Packaged Food (-18.8% chips, -15.1% soft drinks, and -11.3% sweet snacks), +46% Fruits and Veggies, and +23% weight-loss foods among clinical trial patients, according to Morgan Stanley. Investors, especially venture capital, now see clear supply and demand signals for healthier eating, allowing them to both support and benefit from the growth of novel, nutrition-based care interventions.
On the public side, demographic changes like an ageing population have supported Food is Medicine as older adults have represented an important proving ground for nutrition-based clinical interventions, among other SDOH’s, through Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPS), among other specialized public-payer plans.
From an executive perspective, the Biden-Harris Administration Conference on Hunger, Health, and Nutrition has created renewed support for FIM in in healthcare, as a political issue, as a business opportunity, and among non-profit and community based organizations, alike.
From a legislative perspective, the Chronic Care Act of 2017/2018 has paved the way for alternative treatments for individuals covered under public programmes who suffer from chronic conditions.
From a regulatory perspective, guidance from the Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the authority on public payers which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has been transformational in re-aligning incentives to support outcomes through the advent of value-based and other capitated risk payer models.
At the state level, the application and approval of Medicaid “demonstration waivers” have supported individual US states to pilot innovative, nutrition-based FIM interventions.
The USDA, which operates national food assistance programmes like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among others, has been a valuable vector for FIM through innovative programs like GusNIP, which focuses on nutrition incentives and produce prescriptions in the context of food assistance.
While there has been substantial work to get to this point, greater coordination between public and private players is needed to implement Food is Medicine interventions at scale.
Applications and institutional vectors
While it’s self-evident that nutrition is a causal factor of health status, there is still a gap in research to understand the impact of specific nutrition interventions on patients with complex chronic conditions.
Proving each use case to large payers and institutions to demonstrate health impact, cost-effectiveness, or other positive outcome improvements is crucial for establishing scalability and viability.
These can take the form of elder care, post-discharge care, high-risk pregnancy care, medical nutrition therapy for specific chronic diseases, among other food benefits through certain Medicare Advantage plans’ Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill (SSBCI). Several World Economic Forum partners and community members are taking action to close this gap.
Kaiser Permanente, a leading US integrated health care system, has joined forces with the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute to conduct Food is Medicine research across clinical pathways, and with Instacart to expand nutritious food access to its California-based Medicaid patients.
Accenture is currently running a pilot programme to improve health care for vulnerable populations with the goal of supporting health equity. Other non-profit community organizations are also trying to both participate in reimbursement as well as provide meals and food assistance as a charitable good.
Bayer has teamed up with Kroger to provide meals for rural Americans, through Feeding America’s network of community-based organizations. Multi-sectoral partnerships like these will be crucial to support the growth of Food is Medicine.
One-year MTM program costs in USD (billions) Image: Tufts University
Remaining challenges
While the promise of FIM is clear, several challenges hinder widespread adoption. The food environment, dietary patterns, cultural practices, as well as other exogenous factors all play a role in what foods we eat.
Thus, implementing a societal philosophy of healthier eating will require a broader change to the default food options and even normative societal behaviour.
On the individual level, long-term behavior change through adherence to diet and lifestyle adjustments remains a key struggle, although one that the direct provision of healthy food through Food is Medicine strategies appears to make more manageable for many patients and providers, alike.
Doctor and other clinician education around nutrition remains lacking. In one large survey, US medical students reported an average of only 5 hours over the 4 years of medical school.
Yet, given the changing paradigm around FIM taking place today, medical nutrition education should be expanded, including potentially through new requirements for accreditation of medical schools and residency and fellowship training programs, and new content on board-certification exams for primary care providers. Indeed, 9 in 10 medical students felt that it was critical to receive formal training on nutrition counseling to optimize patient care.
While nutrition-based clinical interventions have been growing under public-payer programs, there has been minimal adoption among large private payers operating in traditional fee-for-service models without additional metrics tied to quality or value.
Policymakers need to continue to support the growth of innovation in the Food is Medicine space by supporting the gathering and reporting of pilot program data run at the state level, reforming the Farm Bill including its subsidies and nutrition security programs to support healthier eating, expanding Medicare and Medicaid coverage for FIM, RDN counseling, and medical nutrition services, and supporting the continued growth of payer models that support incentives for preventative care, including through nutrition.
FIM business models
New business models are evolving to solve the problems associated with the implementation of FIM. The rapid advancement of AI technology, digital tools, and wearable devices also plays a pivotal role in enabling these pathways, through increased scalability but also the data needed for screening and tracking patients.
Some emerging models include:
Integrated clinical nutrition platform providers: Season Health and NourishedRx
Benefits: offer a one-stop-shop for nutritionist support, education, medically tailored food delivery, and often other health tracking tools.
Scale: High, these and other integrated solution providers offer a plug-and-play solution for health payers and other institutions and individuals with chronic conditions
Gaps: Focused on disease management rather than prevention
Stat: The global medical foods market of $22.4 billion is projected to grow rapidly with the evolution of FIM.
The retail opportunity: Instacart and Kroger
Benefits: Existing scale (distribution, size, resources), often with captive health units (synergies)
Applications: Medicare Advantage (and other VBID) partner for grocery benefits (not clinical application-like platforms)
Scale: Very high existing grocery footprint, with less behaviour change required vs other delivery methods
Gaps: As MA plans to shift to managed benefits, retailers need to develop their scoring systems to prove they’re not driving up costs without meaningful benefits
Stat: Annual grocery spending among 48 million households with individuals with chronic diseases in the US: $270 billion in 2022.
Nutrition as an employee benefit: Noom and Bitewell
Benefits: US employers’ “double incentive”
Applications: preventative workforce health, productivity boost and absenteeism reduction
Scale: Relatively high, given a preventative orientation
Gaps: health equity – individuals who aren’t employed, are underemployed, or whose employer doesn’t offer these benefits could be left out
Stat: Some studies show as much as a 50% reduction in absenteeism through consuming a high-quality diet, with positive effects on worker productivity as well.
Sustaining the FIM momentum
The rapidly evolving landscape of FIM not only showcases meaningful potential in transforming the healthcare system toward more holistic, cost-effective care. It also reflects one important solution to the global health crisis caused by the detachment of food from its health-oriented roots and the worldwide growth of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods, which were designed to feed a growing population but are now contributing to the burden of diet-related chronic disease.
The World Economic Forum’s New Frontiers of Nutrition initiative as well as its partners and community members are committed to the growth at the intersection of food and health, capitalizing on public-private partnerships for sustained human health and resilience, with the potential for global expansion.
By: Andy Moose (Head of Health and Wellness, Centre for Health and Healthcare, World Economic Forum), Edward Kennedy (Management Consultant, Fellow, Accenture and World Economic Forum) and Dariush Mozaffarian (Distinguished Professor and Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition, Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
Subsistence farmers in countries like India battle extreme weather and financial desperation to support their families.
The AI for Agriculture Innovation initiative held workshops with farmers in India to find out how to help them access the AI tools they need to farm more efficiently and earn more.
The initiative transformed the chili farming for many in Khammam district, India with bot advisory services, AI-based quality testing, and a digital platform to connect buyers and sellers. Participating farmers reported that they doubled their income.
Krishna, a smallholding farmer, diligently cultivates his half-hectare plot in Telangana, India, every day. For this, he earns $120 per month—just enough to meet his family’s basic needs.
But Krishna must also contend with unpredictable monsoons, frequent droughts, pest infestations, and diminishing yields. He must battle the impacts of changing climate patterns and soil health. With no access to a bank, Krishna is also forced to use local loan sharks for finance, paying crippling interest rates. Even then, the essential resources he buys with this money – such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides – aren’t always available.
Post-harvest, Krishna faces another hurdle: 40% wastage in other parts of the supply chain. Logistics, warehousing and accessing a market at which to sell their produce also present significant challenges for many farmers like Krishna.
Strict quality requirements set by traders and processors are also very difficult to meet. These farmers are then trapped in a cycle of subsistence farming because low revenues leave them with less to invest in the next crop cycle. New technologies that make this work easier – precision farming, digital market access or drones, for example – remain out of reach for most farmers like Krishna. They can’t afford the equipment, have limited access to technology and may not have the time to spare to adjust their processes to adopt them properly.
The dynamics of market supply and fluctuating prices only add to these challenges because farmers like Krishna often find themselves losing out when prices fall or demand drops.
Like the other roughly 125 million smallholding farmers in India, Krishna faces these daunting challenges to support himself and his family. For these farmers, agriculture is a high-stakes gamble marked by big risks and minimal returns. Thousands of farmers in India have committed suicide, reflecting financial desperation and weather-induced challenges affect these people.
And Krishna’s story is not unique to India either. An estimated 500 million smallholder farms in the developing world support almost 2 billion people and produce about 80% of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Addressing the plight of Krishna and his counterparts around the world to create a more sustainable and equitable future for smallholding farmers will require a holistic, scalable approach that encompasses financial inclusion and climate resilience.
Using AI for agriculture innovation
This is why the World Economic Forum India’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in collaboration with India’s Union Ministry of Agriculture and the state of Telangana, launched the AI4AI initiative (AI for Agriculture Innovation). Reflecting the complexity of the challenge, organisations involved come from industry (agri-inputs, consumer, food processing, finance, insurance and technology firms), the startup ecosystem and farmer cooperatives.
Over eight months starting June 2020, this endeavour held more than 45 workshops, to discuss the challenges smallholder farmers face and how 4IR could help. These discussions lead to a AI4AI plan that helps smallholder farmers by harnessing the power of new technologies including AI, drones and blockchain.
AI for agriculture can support everything from planning to selling crops. Image: AI4AI Community Paper, March 2021
From framework to impact
We tested the AI4AI framework in the Khammam district of Telangana, India, among 7,000 farmers. We involved industry and start-up partners and used state-government data management tools (the agriculture data exchange and the agriculture data management framework) to scale up the initiative among this large group of farmers.
Named Saagu Baagu locally, this initiative has transformed chili farming in Khammam district using bot advisory services, soil testing technology, AI-based quality testing and a digital platform to connect buyers and sellers.
The pilot took 18 months and three crop cycles to complete. During this time, farmers reported a remarkable surge in net income: $800 per acre in a single crop cycle (6 months), effectively double the average income. The digital advisory services contributed to a 21% increase in chili yield production per acre. Pesticide use fell by 9% and fertilizers dropped by 5%, while quality improvements boosted unit prices by 8%.
Saagu Baagu was not only a success for its farmers, it achieved the sustainability and efficiency goals set by AI4AI. As a result, in October 2023, the state government expanded Saagu Baagu to include 500,000 farmers, covering five crops across 10 districts.
Unlocking digital agriculture’s potential
As much of the global south grapples with the challenges of ensuring food security, mitigating climate change impacts and protecting livelihoods, this Indian agtech initiative shows promising results when using AI for agriculture. Collaboration between governments, industry, philanthropists, innovators and farmers can create national frameworks for implementing digital agriculture programmes that ensure food security, sustainability, and alignment with sustainable development goals.
Sharing lessons learned and success stories via these digital platforms gives farmers valuable insights and evidence-based strategies for using AI for agriculture. This can help accelerate innovation and guide global efforts in digital farming, promoting sustainability, inclusivity, efficiency and improved nutrition worldwide.
By: Jeremy Jurgens (Managing Director, World Economic Forum) and Purushottam Kaushik (Head, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
The Artemis I Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. The successful Artemis I mission was the first in an increasingly complex planned series of missions, which have now been delayed. (NASA/Cory Huston)
Gordon Osinski, Western University
On Jan. 9, NASA announced it would be shifting the launch of Artemis II to September 2025. Artemis III — the first mission to land humans on the surface of the moon since 1972 — was moved to September 2026.
What do these delays mean for Canada’s plans to explore the moon?
I am a professor, an explorer and a planetary geologist. For the past decade, I have been helping to train Canadian and U.S. astronauts in geology. I am also the principal investigator for Canada’s first ever rover mission, and a member of the Artemis III Geology Team.
Global News reports on NASA’s announcement to delay Artemis II and III missions.
The Artemis program
It has been 52 years since humans last walked on the surface of the moon. Since then, humanity has not ventured beyond low Earth orbit, about the distance from Halifax to Fredericton, or Toronto to Ottawa.
In Greek mythology, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and the twin sister of Apollo — a fitting name for the program that will take humans back to the moon. Unlike Apollo, the Artemis program also has the explicit goals of establishing the first long-term presence on the moon — similar to Antarctica research outposts — and sending the first astronauts to Mars.
The Artemis missions are ambitious to say the least, and represent the next major collaborative international effort, building on the success of the International Space Station.
Indeed, with the addition of Angola in November, 33 nations have now signed the Artemis Accords. The Accords lay out a common set of principles for the exploration and use of outer space. Canada was one of the original eight countries to sign these accords.
A core principle of the Artemis Accords is to enhance peaceful relationships between nations, which is needed now, perhaps more than ever since the Cold War.
Failure is not an option
After the success of the Artemis I mission in late 2022, most people probably thought there would be a quick succession of missions and we would be back on the lunar surface in no time. While the originally planned two years between Artemis I and II may sound a long time, it is in terms of space exploration, where the development of missions is often measured in decades.
The major reason for this is that space is incredibly unforgiving. From withstanding the huge G-forces and vibrations as the rocket accelerates to over 40,000 kilometres an hour during launch — the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravity — to the extremes of temperature, designing technologies for space is hard and costly.
Every piece of the Artemis infrastructure must be tested and tested again to make sure it can withstand the rigours of space. The environment of the moon is a particularly challenging thermal environment, with a staggering 300 C temperature difference between the lunar day and night.
Some of this testing can be done in a laboratory; however, once a certain scale is reached, this becomes impossible. Take SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown and a key part of the architecture for Artemis.
On Nov. 18, its second launch, the Starship exploded after reaching its goal of entering space. SpaceX engineers gathered a wealth of data to improve the design of Starship. However, this test made it clear that this rocket, which will be used to land the Artemis III crew on the surface of the moon, simply wasn’t going to be ready for a 2025 launch.
The second test flight of Starship from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on Nov. 18, 2023.
The astronauts’ long wait
The stakes could not be higher for the Artemis II mission as onboard, for the first time, will be four astronauts, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
While not scheduled to land on the surface of the moon, Artemis II is still an incredibly challenging mission that carries with it an element of risk that comes with any “first.” Indeed, this will be the first time humans will fly in NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the first mission to take humans beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
If this mission is successful, these four astronauts will have boldly gone farther from our home planet than any other humans, ever. So it makes sense to take time, especially considering some of the obstacles still facing Artemis II.
On the plus side, the Artemis II crew will have more time for training. Having been involved in providing geology training to two of the Artemis II crew last September — Hansen and Christina Koch — having an additional few months for training will definitely not go to waste.
This delay will also give Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons time to come up to speed with training as part of the back-up crew for Artemis 2 — a job she was only assigned in November.
Canadian Space Agency astronauts Jeremy Hansen and Jenni Gibbons with Gordon Osinski at the Kamestastin Lake impact structure, Labrador. (Canadian Space Agency)
Robots to the moon
On the same day that NASA announced the delays to the Artemis program, the U.S. company Astrobotic announced that its Peregrine lunar lander suffered a “critical loss of propellent” not long after launch. This means there is no chance of it being able to land successfully on the moon.
The lander has been gathering valuable data while its fuel supplies lasted, so all is not lost. This is also the first launch as part of NASA’s new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Despite the failures and setbacks in the Artemis and CLPS programs, 2024 promises to be the most exciting year for lunar exploration in decades. Astrobotic is planning two more launches, including NASA’s ambitious Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER).
Two other U.S. companies, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, are also scheduled to launch their first lunar missions. And even sooner, the Japanese space agency JAXA has scheduled the landing of its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on Jan. 19 — if successful, this would make Japan only the fifth country to do so.
I will be watching these upcoming CLPS missions closely, as one of these companies will take the Canadian Lunar Rover to the moon no earlier than 2026. Even before this mission, thanks to the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program, Canadian companies such as Mission Control Space Services and Canadensys are working on software and hardware to contribute to various CLPS missions.
Artist’s rendition of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander on the surface of the moon. (Astrobiotic)
Canadarm3 and the Lunar Gateway
Almost lost in the details of NASA’s announcement about Artemis II and III was the statement that Artemis IV remains on track to launch in September 2028. In addition to landing two astronauts on the lunar surface, a major objective for Artemis IV will be the continued assembly of the Lunar Gateway.
The Gateway is a small space station that will act as an outpost orbiting the moon, providing support for lunar surface missions and, in the longer term, as a staging point for further deep space exploration. The Gateway will be the home for Canada’s biggest financial contribution to Artemis: Canadarm3.
An artist’s concept of Canadarm3 located on the exterior of the Gateway. (Canadian Space Agency, NASA)
Currently being built by Canadian company MDA Space with the support of dozens of Canadian partners and suppliers, Canadarm3 represents the next generation of space robotics. In contrast to the ISS, astronauts will not always be present on the Gateway, so Canadarm3 is being built with advanced AI-enabled sensors to enable autonomous operations.
Just like what Canadarm did for the Space Shuttle Program and Canadarm2 did for the International Space Station, Canadarm3 will be an iconic reminder of Canada’s international status as a spacefaring nation.
Gordon Osinski, Professor in Earth and Planetary Science, Western University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article (https://theconversation.com/what-delays-to-the-artemis-ii-and-iii-missions-mean-for-canada-220830).
In the rush to harness AI for profit, business shouldn’t neglect the possible negative impact of the technology.
Misinformation, privacy and bias are all areas requiring attention.
Technological advancements are key to confronting global challenges – this requires innovation and guardrails.
As the adoption of generative AI rapidly expands across all corners of society, businesses of all kinds are poised to become quicker, more creative and more clever. We’re seeing this everywhere: Casinos use AI to better predict customers’ gambling habits and lure them with irresistible promotions. AI guides product designers as they choose better and more efficient materials. Many firms are even beginning to use the technology to predict payments based on scanned invoices. According to Goldman Sachs, the widespread use of AI could lead to a 1.5% annual growth in productivity over a 10-year period.
However, this rapid expansion also should bring with it caution: Businesses must be careful not to expand the adoption of AI purely for profit. They must realize that, like many other fast-emerging technologies before it, unbridled use of AI could have dangerous consequences. Generative AI has the potential to turbocharge the spread of disinformation, worsen social media addiction among teenagers, and perpetuate existing social biases. These consequences are not only harmful for society at large, but bad for businesses that work tirelessly to generate trust among customers – only to mis-step and see reputational risks from which it can be impossible to recover. As firms try to adapt to the quickly evolving AI landscape, how can businesses use this groundbreaking technology ethically?
1. Prioritizing data privacy
First, firms must prioritize protecting data – their own, their clients’, and their customers’. To do so, they must understand the risks of using public Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs are the backbone of generative AI. They are algorithms that feed on large amounts of data to make predictions and generate content. Public LLMs gather data from generic, publicly available datasets and make it available to anyone. If prompted correctly, they may reveal or leak sensitive data used in their training processes – or introduce biases. Since LLMs lack a delete button, they cannot unlearn data, which makes risks related to leakage permanent. Regulated industries, like financial institutions, should be particularly worried about the risks of using public LLMs. A leak that publishes financial information, such as bank account numbers and transaction details, could result in client identity theft and even fraud, not to mention hefty legal fees for banks.
To mitigate this risk, companies can use private LLMs, which are trained on a company’s specific, private corpus of data and can only be accessed by authorized stakeholders. With private LLMs, firms can reap the benefits of generative AI – for example, via chatbots developed on customers’ own data — without the risk of sending the data to third parties. And because these LLMs are trained on specific information and allow more control over update cycles, they are less likely to “hallucinate”, or provide “irrelevant, nonsensical, or factually incorrect” responses.
2. Mitigating AI bias
At the core of AI is data. Without it, AI is useless — but with the wrong data, the technology can also be dangerous. Popular generative AI systems like ChatGPT rely on large and publicly available data sources, some of which reflect historical and social biases. AI systems that rely on these datasets end up replicating these biases. Consider our earlier example of a bank: Algorithms trained on historical data generated by discriminatory practices (for example, redlining in 1930s Chicago) can lead banks to deny loans to marginalized communities. Insurance companies can also end up charging higher premiums, and credit bureaus misrepresenting credit scores.
The best way to combat AI bias is to incorporate humans in LLM training processes. This human-AI relationship can be twofold: Humans can monitor AI systems to provide input, feedback and corrections to enhance its performance, and the trained AI can be used to help humans detect bias in their behaviour. For example, as humans provide AI with the right data, and teach it to phase out bias through corrections, AI can be trained to alert hiring managers of hidden discriminatory practices that may exist in their companies’ hiring decisions.
3. Implementing a framework for transparency
Firms must ensure that their use of AI is in compliance with regulatory frameworks, including data protection, cybersecurity and corporate governance laws. But how can firms comply with oversight mechanisms that have yet to be designed? The answer lies in transparency. Transparency is key to generate trust and overcome fear that AI can manipulate and even dictate our lives. The EU’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) has developed an assessment list for trustworthy AI that firms can use as a guide. It follows these three tenets:
Traceability: Is the process that developed the AI system accurately and properly documented? For example, can you trace back which data was used by the AI system to generate decisions?
Explainability: Can the reasoning behind the AI system’s solutions or decisions be explained? More importantly, can humans understand the decisions made by an AI system?
Communication: Has the system’s potentials and limitations been communicated to users? For example, should you tell users that you are communicating with an AI bot and not a human?
AI is one of the most promising technological tools ever developed, not because it can help us boost profits and productivity (though it certainly will), but because of its enormous potential to help us become better humans. We must never lose sight of the fact that humans, including humans in the private sector, are the ones steering the wheel behind AI’s development. It is our responsibility to develop it responsibly – it’s good for society and good for business.
By: Raj Verma (Chief Executive Officer, SingleStore) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
Underwriting now looks to assess the risks of climate change and other modern risks
There are fears that the private insurance sector will be unable to absorb all the losses caused by climate change-induced natural disasters and cybercrime.
The Allianz Risk Barometer 2024 showscyber security is the top risk worldwide.
The insurance and re-insurance industry has the expertise to meet these challenges, but it requires re-writing the underwriting story, using advanced tools, expanded roles and innovative approaches.
The term ‘uninsurability’ is capturing headlines and causing growing concern. Reports of insurers exiting California’s property market due to the inability to price natural disasters, like wildfires or Floridians leaving the state due to skyrocketing homeowner insurance costs, are fueling debate on the fundamental insurability of climate-related risk. Meanwhile, Lloyds of London warns of a hypothetical scenario: the global economy could lose $3.5 trillion due to a major cyberattack targeting payment systems – losses the private insurance sector would not absorb.
Studying such scenarios is routine risk management, but the headlines provoke an honest discussion about the price of prioritizing security, whether from environmental disasters caused by human activity or digital pirates. While this is a healthy debate, it often assumes a false conclusion – that insurers are increasingly incapable of measuring and managing today’s most important and concerning risks, like climate change or cyber security, and worse, are walking away from them. Calling for government backstops can only be a partial answer for catastrophic peak loss scenarios. As an industry, we need to be able to provide solutions for what keeps our customers awake at night.
Today, we published the Allianz Risk Barometer 2024. This sheds light on the most pressing risks facing global businesses.
The report showscyber security is the top risk worldwide. Cyber-attacks and IT outages reached record losses in 2023, mainly stemming from a resurgence in ransomware and extortion. Cyber threats continue to evolve, with hackers increasingly targeting IT and physical supply chains, launching mass cyber-attacks and finding new ways to extort money from businesses, large and small.
Natural hazards and extreme weather is the third highest major risk, jumping from number six last year. Climate change stays at number seven among the top risks globally. The trajectory of natural catastrophe losses has been steadily rising. 2023 saw record insured losses from natural catastrophe events surpass $100 billion for the fourth year in a row, according to Swiss Re – a cost attributed to a warming climate. Ranking second on this year’s Risk Barometer, we find business interruption, often caused by cyber or natural catastrophes.
What’s clear is that cyber and climate risk exemplify the nature of modern risk: ever-changing and evolving, hard to predict based on past experiences, highly complex, connected and interdependent on a global scale – and, last but not least, potentially causing catastrophic loss scenarios that could turn these risks into potentially systemic ones.
Scary risks indeed and yet not unmanageable. We in the insurance and reinsurance industry have the skills, talent and expertise to meet these challenges, but it requires re-writing the underwriting story, using advanced tools, expanded roles and innovative approaches. Specifically, insurers need to accelerate in the following three areas:
1. Continuously upgrade technical excellence
Technology and richer data sets will drive more sophisticated modelling and risk assessment, allowing insurers to understand their exposures better and become comfortable underwriting them. It will help us analyze modern risks with a forward-looking approach rather than through the rear-view mirror of historical claims analysis. Machine learning and AI can analyse vast amounts of data to identify and predict potential cyber threats. And, engineering expertise, powered by data, will enable us to assess new and largely untested sustainable materials or low-carbon technologies – from mass wood timber to carbon capture and storage – so that we can dare to take green lighthouse solutions into our portfolios.
2. Innovate product solutions
Traditional underwriting of physical risks does not meet the reality of evolving extreme climate impacts or intangible cyber threats. Insurers must evolve by innovating new ways of transferring risk and supplementing traditional indemnity insurance solutions. As an industry, we need to innovate products that combine a strong risk mitigation element with insurance coverage and advance existing alternative risk transfer solutions to bring them into the mainstream. For example, AM Best expects parametric products to represent a growing share of the insurance world. Parametric insures a policyholder against the occurrence of a specific event by paying a set amount based on a pre-determined trigger, as opposed to the magnitude of the losses in a traditional indemnity policy.
3. Broaden the insurance value proposition
Insurance is no longer the business of just paying claims. As an industry, we insurers underleverage our risk expertise for promoting prevention and preparedness. We owe it to society and our stakeholders to expand the insurer’s value proposition to include supporting customers’ adaption, mitigation and resilience measures. When insurers play a deeper risk consultant role, our risk assessments can also include important mitigation services. Broadening the insurance value proposition in this way enhances preparedness, which increases resilience, reduces losses and business interruptions and extends insurability to higher-risk cases and areas, benefitting local economies. Policyholders must do their part in these risk consulting relationships and engage in mitigation and preparation with their insurance partner. Insurers can also broaden their value through risk education, which is vital to improving societal and business risk awareness.
Insurers have always been integral economic and business partners, offering clients freedom from risk and enabling them to focus on what they do best – daring to explore, compete, and grow. As an industry, however, we take a transactional approach to partnering, focusing on covering risk and paying claims but undervaluing our deeper partnership potential. We can do better.
To foster preparedness and prevention against modern risks, we need to leverage the value of collaborative partnerships. Partnerships with businesses to help them become more resilient and competitive. Partnerships with governments to find solutions to catastrophic peak loss scenarios. Partnerships with individuals, institutions and society to provide peace of mind, risk awareness, loss mitigation and community resiliency.
By: Christopher Townsend (Member of the Board of Management, Allianz) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
Labour market disruptions, risks to the accessibility of products, and gaps in financing and capability impact fairness in the green transition.
Labour market disruptions, risks to the accessibility of products, and gaps in financing and capability impact fairness in the green transition.
A shared vision and definition for an equitable transition is essential to identify and address the distributional impacts of climate action.
Accelerating an Equitable Transition: A framework for Economic Equity supports leaders to enable a fair transition for people and planet.
The window to avert the consequences of climate change is shrinking fast. Despite the unprecedented pace of low-emission technology development, investment allocation and policy implementation over the past decade, the advance of climate change is accelerating. The past nine years, 2015 to 2023, were the warmest on record, and even full implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s) will put the world on track to warming of 2.5-2.9°Celsius above pre-industrial levels in this century. Climate change-induced environmental risks topped the long-term global risks identified by World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024.
To keep the goal of net zero by 2050 alive, climate action must be accelerated.
Inequalities, costs and opportunities
The intensification of climate change is occurring in the backdrop of persistent income inequalities. While global inequality between countries has declined since the 1990’s, within-country inequalities have increased. Over the past three decades, income inequality has increased in more than half of the countries globally. The richest 10% of households own around 60-80% of wealth, and the poorest 50% of households own less than 5% of the wealth in all the regions in the world.
Similar disparities parallel the distribution of GHG emissions. Within-country gaps account for 64% of global inequality in per-capita emissions today. The inverse was true in 1990, when between-country divides accounted for 62% of global carbon inequality. In no region of the world do the bottom 50% of emitters contribute more than 5% of GHG emissions. Yet, the exposure to climate hazards and the effects of responses to climate change fall disproportionately on low-income populations.
Global Carbon Inequality
Global Carbon Inequality
As countries accelerate the green transition, efforts to mitigate climate change will create both costs and opportunities. It is imperative to ensure that distribution of these costs and opportunities do not exacerbate pre-existing inequalities or create barriers to inclusive participation in the transition. The effects of potential shocks induced by climate action, such as energy or food price volatilities, access to basic infrastructure, or affordability of sustainable products can cascade through the economy, falling unevenly on those with limited means to respond.
The social and political support that the green transition requires cannot be developed and sustained unless equity is the foundational principle of the transition. Climate action that exacerbates inequalities can surface geopolitical and socioeconomic fragmentation, which can impact the cost, speed and acceptance of the green transition.
Framework for evaluating equity of the green transition
The green transition requires systemic shifts across several sectors, highlighting the scale of transformation given the state of carbon lock-in. As of 2022, coal, oil and gas accounted for 82% of global primary energy mix. GHG emissions from fossil fuels reached an all-time high in 2023. Breaking the inertia of emissions intensive production-consumption systems indicates the urgency of accelerated scale-up of low-carbon energy sources and transitioning away from fossil fuels. The supply-side interventions need to be orchestrated with simultaneous shifts in technologies, infrastructure and productivity in energy consuming sectors such as buildings, heavy industry and transport.
Beyond energy supply and demand, further emission reduction requires the greening of the food system, including crop production, land use and livestock farming – which are responsible for a quarter of global GHG emissions. Finally, the green transition will require a shift from the linear economic model of “take-make-dispose” to circular economic model of “reduce-reuse-recycle”, to optimize consumption of finite resources and mitigate the ecological impacts of resource extraction, manufacturing and disposal.
A framework for economic equity of the green transition.
A framework for economic equity of the green transition.
The sectors exposed to the green transition are key sources of economic output, livelihoods, and goods and services essential for the society. As the sectoral green transformations take effect, understanding the intersections of the shifts with the drivers of economic inequality is of prime importance. Economic equity considers the fairness in distributing the costs and benefits of the mitigation actions arising from the shift to a low-carbon economy and can be broken down into five areas:
· Employment and job transition: Significant impacts are expected on workers across all industries – the ILO estimates that while 103 million jobs will be created, 78 million workers will lose their jobs and many more will require upskilling.
· Accessibility of products and services: There is a risk that some groups will have limited use of both green and traditional offerings and will therefore be left behind in the transition. EV infrastructure, for example, is less commonly available in rural regions.
· Affordability of products and services: New technologies and processes required to create “greener” alternatives can come with higher costs, leading to high prices for consumers. Equally, the price of existing goods may increase as a result of carbon tax, for example. This will penalise those with low incomes.
· Access to financing and investments: CPI estimates that the average annual need for climate finance in 2030 will be $9 trillion, while current flows are at $1.3 trillion. Unequal distribution of finance flows across industries and business can slow down the transition for some.
· Access to capacity (such as knowledge, technology, patents and resources): In addition to finance, capacity is required to drive the transition and the concentration of know-how can drive inequality.
Charting the course for an Equitable Transition
The scale and nature of the intersections between the green and equity dimensions reflects the complexity and far-reaching ramifications of the green transition. For a transition to a low-carbon and resilient economy that creates shared prosperity and forges an inclusive path for all stakeholders, it is critical to arrive at a shared definition and vision for an equitable green transition.
To this effect, the framework for economic equity in the green transition lays the foundation of the Forum’s “Equitable Transition Initiative”, in collaboration with BCG. The Initiative aims to develop consensus on shared language and organizing principles, as outlined in the publication Accelerating an Equitable Transition: A Framework for Economic Equity. In subsequent phases, the Initiative will distil thought leadership into actionable frameworks and tools, and best practices at sectoral, national and local levels. Furthermore, the Initiative will mobilize a coalition to connect stakeholders from across sectors and geographies for knowledge-exchange and partnerships, recognizing the centrality of public-private collaboration in responding to equity gaps both locally and globally.
As we pursue a more sustainable future, we must strike a delicate balance – harmonizing the critical drive to decarbonize the global economy with the equally vital imperative of addressing human needs. Absent that equilibrium, we risk leaving many behind and dampening the momentum required to keep net zero within reach. But if we put fairness and equity at the heart of climate efforts, we can accelerate progress for people and for the planet.
The report will inform the development of the Equitable Transition Initiative, launching at the Annual Meeting 2024.
By: Attilio Di Battista (Head of Impact Design and Coordination, World Economic Forum) and Douglas Alan Beal (Partner and Director, Global Lead of Social Impact and Just Transition in FI, Boston Consulting Group) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
Harness digital transformation to grow your business while lowering emissions.
A focused IT strategy can break the perceived link between lowering emissions and sacrificing business growth.
IT systems transformation can boost sustainability both in terms of new and legacy technology.
Digitalization can free up human capital to further optimize your company’s decarbonization journey.
One of the biggest mental obstacles to adopting aggressive emissions reduction goals is a perceived conflict between business growth and emissions reduction.
Intuitively, it makes sense to us that growth – doing or producing more – means a corresponding rise in energy usage and carbon emissions. Under this thinking, reducing emissions means limiting output or buying more costly renewable energy and taking a voluntary hit to the bottom line. The facile nature of the argument is why it is so often used as a cudgel against progressive environmental policy.
But this need not be the case and, as we often find, technology can be part of the solution. One of the reasons I chose a career in technology is the opportunity to help overcome seemingly intractable challenges. Fortunately, there are several concrete, explainable, IT-focused mindset changes that organizations can adopt to decouple business results from emissions growth:
Transformation is your growth engine
Transformation is often intimidating for organizations because of the requisite investment, as well as the familiarity of old systems and applications. The organizational change required to adopt new systems can be daunting, and it’s often easier to defer expenditures can be easily deferred as a quick balance sheet fix.
But the true cost of sustainability is often misunderstood – especially in an environment where emissions reductions are a matter of market access. After all, it’s predicted that 90% of Global 2000 companies will soon mandate IT carbon-neutrality targets and energy reductions for their vendors. Your sales force will, quite literally, have to sell the sustainability of your operations to close deals. Viewing lower-carbon transformation as optional leaves money on the table.
Fortunately, there’s a great deal of low-hanging fruit in the IT estates of most organizations. For example, most virtual environments utilize only 30% of the compute capacity they’re paying for, making optimizing of CPU capacity through consumption-based models attractive. Overall, 40% of data centre servers consume 66% of data centre power while performing only 7% of all work. A shift to either more efficient and modern on-premise servers, some with liquid cooling, or an energy-efficient and renewable-powered data centre is a straightforward way to reduce energy costs and emissions. There’s even an opportunity in the application life cycle to replace legacy code with that optimized for a cloud environment, saving energy and providing a value proposition to your organization and your customers via reduced emissions.
Adding to this journey’s counter-intuitive nature is that your legacy IT is still a key asset. In fact, it can contribute to making that transformation affordable and reducing your environmental impact while boosting sales. Upgrading your IT and consolidating older infrastructure can put money back in your pocket by both reducing your monthly energy bills and freeing up value from retired assets that can be reinvested into your business for other projects.
Embrace automation and digitalization
Human intervention is often applied to procedures and processes where it is not necessary. This is a cost sink in two important ways: firstly, it overlooks carbon-intensive inefficiencies that can be identified and remedied in real time by technology, and it also wastes high-value human capital on lower-value functions.
You can enhance the value of your human capital by freeing your employees using AI and machine learning, and in so doing reduce your organization’s carbon intensity. Manual intervention in numerous processes and functions, such as physical plant status, network state, machine tuning and maintenance, is a missed opportunity to apply AI and machine learning in the interest of streamlined, lower-carbon automation and digitalization.
By taking live bodies out of these tasks, you’re freeing them up to focus on things that can only be done with the human mind – talent management, thought leadership, innovation, and a myriad of other things that increase the long-term success and viability of your enterprise – doubling the opportunity value of a carbon-conscious technology shift.
All of this isn’t to say that it’s easy to shift the mindset necessary to adopt IT for a more sustainable organization. But it is possible. Look no further than my homeland of Ireland’s journey. Ireland is a global leader in wind energy production with 30% of its energy now produced by wind farms.
It wasn’t always that way. Despite having one of the most blustery coastlines in the world, wind farms initially received significant pushback from the population. Peat and coal were abundant, cheap and familiar. Wind turbines were costly and foreign. On top of this, the concept and reality of climate change weren’t always as tangible as they are today.
But energy has always been notoriously expensive there. As wind turbines slowly began to speckle the Irish landscape and energy costs crept down, acceptance soared. Now, 80% of the population backs wind farms, both because of the economic benefit and because the consumer – the Irish public – increasingly demanded climate-conscious energy. The market saw transformation as an opportunity, not a trade-off. So should we all.
By: Fidelma Russo (Executive Vice-Present and General Manager, Hybrid Cloud; Chief Technology Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise) Originally published at: World Economic Forum
