On 15-16 November 2022, G20 members gathered at the 17th G20 Heads of State and Government Summit in Bali. As usual, at the end of the event, the leaders released a declaration. The document consists of 52 paragraphs and repeatedly underscores the importance of accelerating digital transformation to achieve the SDGs.
Members recognise the key role that digital technologies play in building a resilient and sustainable food system and agriculture. They pledge to support the adoption of innovative practices and technologies – including digital – in this sector to increase productivity in harmony with nature and ensure its sustainability.
Overall, the statement adopts an ambitious tone towards sustainable actions and the commitment to a more inclusive, human-centric, empowering, and sustainable advancement of digital transformation.
The Climate Technology Centre & Network (CTCN), a network of institutions hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and responsible for helping developing countries access environmentally sound technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation, has launched its third Programme of Work for 2023–2027 at COP27. The new work programme focuses on the transformative potential of national systems of innovation (NSI) and digitalisation as enablers of technology transfer and development in five transformative systems: water-energy-food nexus, buildings and infrastructure, sustainable mobility, energy systems, and business and industry. It will explore how digital technologies and circular design can contribute to reducing global carbon emissions.
As examples, the document cites the role of data and digitalisation in early warning systems and nature-based solutions and digital technologies to support off-grid energy systems, including blockchain technologies for urban transport and building.
Along with this new programme, CTCN also launched the first joint work programme in collaboration with the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) to strengthen and accelerate efforts on transformative climate technology development and transfer. Digitalisation is among the activities included in the joint programme, which will focus on the role of distributed ledgers and green technology databases as support tools and resources for innovation cooperation.
As part of the Horizon Europe research programme, the Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space was selected by the European Commission to lead the ASCEND (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty) feasibility study for data centres in orbit.
The study will assess the possibility of launching, developing, and operating data centres in space using robotic assistance technologies, as well as verify whether the carbon emissions for installing the infrastructure will be lower than that generated by their ground-based counterparts.
In addition to helping the EU achieve its climate targets, the project could represent a groundbreaking development in the European space and digital sectors.
The Climate Chain Coalition (CCC), a multistakeholder network focused on advancing distributed ledger technology and related digital solutions (e.g. IoT, big data) to address climate response for mitigation and adaptation, released its stocktake report at COP27, Egypt. The document presents a review of the CCC members, showing their priorities for different types of applications, issues/sectors, stakeholders and target users, among other indicators. The data reveals, for example, that although 15 members have blockchain products commercially available, a significant number of members (97) are still researching the use of blockchain.
To continue promoting the CCC membership and partnership, the network launched a new strategy to enhance cooperation among members and other partners, deploy digital solutions, and encourage co-creation and co-leadership to build data and digital infrastructure through Climate Chain Labs to accelerate innovations for climate action.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) initiative to support global efforts to detect and act on major methane emissions sources. Established as part of UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory strategy, MARS is a satellite-based system designed to detect emissions of methane and alert governments, companies, and operators so they can take rapid mitigation action.
Findings of the ‘Farmers and Digitalisation’ survey reveal that there is already intensive use of digital technologies on farms to reduce fertiliser use, optimise water use, and improve soil health. Although farmers are willing to continue to invest in digital tools, they face a number of barriers to doing so, mainly related to the cost and availability of devices and lack of connectivity.
In the view of farmers, greater government support is needed to promote the digitisation of farms and overcome these barriers. Support is not limited to increasing access to the internet, but also involves providing training and capacity development, as well as subsidies and inventions for the adoption of digital solutions.
The survey conducted by Savanta ComRes and commissioned by Vodafone Group interviewed farmers from 13 countries in Europe and Africa about their perspectives on digital farming, environmental challenges, and current geopolitical and socio-economic pressures.
Given that digital exclusion mirrors and magnifies existing social, cultural, and economic inequities and pushes vulnerable children closer to the edges of marginalisation, the digital transformation of society has an uneven consequence on all children. To address the effects of the shifting digital and governance landscape, as well as emerging and embedded technologies, on children’s experience with digital technologies, a future-oriented framework for an equitable digital future was proposed by UNICEF. The framework highlights the need to move from digital inclusion to digital equality.
The framework can be used as a foundation for developing and evaluating digital inclusion policies, as a roadmap for structuring the involvement of pertinent stakeholders in achieving digital equality for children, and as a tool to assist in the design of policies and interventions by state authorities, civic groups, and the private sector. For this framework to effectively respond to new trends and technologies, a wider range of stakeholders must be engaged in its implementation.
For over three decades, FONGIT has been de-risking the entrepreneurial journey and supporting entrepreneurs with the expertise, resources, and financing they need to transform innovative ideas into sustainable companies.
FONGIT is a private, nonprofit foundation, benefiting from the support of the State of Geneva.
Digital activities
FONGIT’s mission is to transform innovation into social and economic value in the Geneva region. The foundation currently supports over 250 innovative early-stage ventures by providing financing, targeted coaching, fully equipped offices and labs, administration, legal help and accounting, and a vibrant community.
Digital policy issues
Digital economy
Through its activities dedicated to supporting innovative startups, FONGIT contributes to the growth of the digital economy. For more than three decades, entrepreneurs supported by the Foundation have developed companies in areas such as information and communications technology (ICT), advanced engineering, and life sciences.
We offer two programmes optimised to support innovations at different stages of maturity – Initiation Innovation and Startup Support.
Initiation Innovation is designed for early-stage projects that need shaping and de-risking before deciding to launch the startup.
Our Startup Support programme is for more advanced innovative projects where the company is ready for foundation, or is already founded, and has a full pitch deck and an engaged team.
In evaluating projects for our support programmes, we take a comprehensive look at the novelty, potential, and maturity of each venture. We are proud to support innovative ideas and startups that have the potential to make a positive impact on society, furthering the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
If projects are looking mainly for funding, the FIF (FONGIT Innovation Fund) provides three different types of financing for Geneva-based technological innovations that have a positive impact on people and the planet. The FIF aims to accelerate innovation processes within Universities, Hautes Écoles, and other Geneva-based research institutions, within startups, scale-ups, and SMEs experiencing rapid growth in the technological environment. The Fund is supported by the Republic and Canton of Geneva, the Fondation Modus, the International Trade Centre (ITC), and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Sustainable development
All FONGIT-supported startups are required to ensure that their work directly or indirectly contributes to the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). FONGIT collaborates closely with UNEP and ITC to assess and highlight the impact of its startups on the SDGs.
Interdisciplinary approaches
As an innovation leader, FONGIT has recognised the increasing integration of seemingly unrelated technologies, prompting a move towards tech convergence. This trend is notably advanced in the life sciences domain, where addressing medical challenges involves multidisciplinary interactions across technologies like ICT, hardware, physics, and medical expertise. The acceleration in Geneva’s innovation landscape began several years ago when the State of Geneva made the decision to put innovation at the centre of its development strategy. This has led to enhanced collaboration among entrepreneurs, facilitated by communal spaces, fostering the exchange of ideas that benefit various sectors.
In the next few years, our goal is to promote the development of the startup ecosystem in Geneva by increasing both their quantity and quality to reach the level of the most advanced Swiss hubs. A key element of this development will be fostering the life sciences ecosystem, centred around the Campus Biotech. Our ambition is to actively participate in transforming Geneva into a major hub of innovation in different domains.
Housed at the Palais des Nations, UN Geneva (UNOG) serves as the representative office of the UN Secretary-General at Geneva. A focal point for multilateral diplomacy, UN Geneva serviced more than 8,500 meetings in 2024, making it one of the busiest conference centres in the world. With more than 1,600 staff, UN Geneva is the most prominent duty station of the UN Secretariat outside the UN headquarters in New York.
Digital activities
UN Geneva hosts many meetings and processes related to disarmament, human rights, e-commerce, health, labour, development, and other areas. In addition to these meetings, UN Geneva also hosts several thematic cultural activities and organises the Ciné ONU project, which uses films to shine a light on the UN’s work on gender equality, human rights, humanitarian aid, health, peace and reconciliation, and many other issues.
Digital policy issues
Sustainable development
Led by UN Geneva, the BeyondLab is a multistakeholder innovation space for the SDGs that inspires and promotes system change through new lenses to long-term sustainability. An example of a concrete initiative is the Geneva SDG Data Forum, launched in 2022 in partnership with the Geneva Graduate Institute and Deloitte Switzerland. The Geneva SDG Data Forum acts as an informal platform for individuals and organisations to share SDG data knowledge through a series of hands-on ateliers on data, monitoring, and accountability.
The Beyond Lab also played a key role in the inception of the GESDA Open Quantum Institute (OQI) through its function as an OQI advisory board member, offering guidance and insights into potential case studies and applications of quantum technologies for the SDGs and long-term sustainability.
Other examples of initiatives launched or supported by UN Geneva in the area of sustainable development include SDG Acceleration Actions, an initiative dedicated to mobilising Geneva-based actors, working to make SDGs a reality, and Building Bridges Week, dedicated to creating an international movement for sustainable finance.
In addition, the International Geneva Perception Change project – managed by a team of the Office of UN Geneva’s Director-General – has among its four areas of work the promotion of the SDGs. SDG Mapping, for instance, showcases who does what in Geneva towards the global goals. The other three areas are related to making information accessible, changing the narratives, and promoting the work of Geneva-based organisations.
Capacity development
The UN Library & Archives Geneva serves as a space for knowledge and learning. It facilitates knowledge exchanges, encourages innovation and collaboration, and acts as a centre for research on multilateralism.
The library provides access to a diverse set of resources (books, articles, UN documents, etc.) on digital-related topics such as economy, trade, human rights, and peace and security. It also facilitates access to numerous databases (maintained by various UN entities) such as the UN Digital Library.
The library coordinates the UN Knowledge and Learning Commons, together with the Centre for Learning and Multilingualism. The Commons hosts activities and learning experiences on various subjects, including some with a digital dimension, such as technology and innovation, information literacy, hybrid meetings, digital accessibility, and multilingualism.
The Conference Primers platform gives rapid access to all conference summaries and to key decisions taken at meetings held at UN Geneva. It continues to grow, with advice from experts, contributions from partners, and research led by the UN Library & Archives Geneva.
In 2022, the Library & Archives also completed a major five-year project to provide online access to the entire original archives of the League of Nations between 1919 and 1946: The Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project (LONTAD). As a result, nearly 15 million pages of materials are now available online, free of charge. Thanks to this project, every person connected to the internet now has an opportunity to consult various documents of the League of Nations online.
The UN Geneva’s podcasts reinforce the organisation’s outreach efforts, spotlighting issues, and bringing the key messages of the UN to another platform. Scripted, recorded, and edited at the Palais des Nations, the English-language podcast UN Catch-up Dateline Geneva and the French-language podcast ONU Info Genève offer up the week’s biggest stories from International Geneva, including from UN agencies and their partners. The podcasts are available weekly via social media platforms and UN News.
Digital tools and initiatives
Geneva has been traditionally strong on peace initiatives. It is often regarded as a city of choice for mediators and special envoys because it provides a neutral, discreet, secure space for dialogue. Many peace talks, and conflict prevention and mediation efforts are hosted at the Palais des Nations.
Digital Mediation Toolkit 1.0, developed by the UN and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in 2019, assesses opportunities and risks associated with the use of digital technologies in the mediation context and provides concrete examples and advice from experts and practitioners. The digital technologies and tools currently used by mediators include social media, geographic information systems (GIS), and data analytics.
Mandate Review and Management System (MRMS), a tool used by UN Secretariat entities to support the decision-making of the member states. Each year, over 100 complex oral statements of programme budget implications can emanate from draft resolutions and decisions of the Human Rights Council, the intergovernmental body of the UN system which is headquartered in Geneva. The MRMS greatly promotes efficiency and transparency and enhances real-time collaboration in the creation of oral statements, archiving of data, and the overall workflow of this process.
UNTERM is a multilingual terminology database maintained jointly by the UN Secretariat and certain specialised agencies of the UN system, including the International Maritime Organization (IMO), UNESCO, WHO, and WMO. UNTERM provides terminology and nomenclature in subjects relevant to the work of the UN system. Information is provided in the six UN official languages, and there are also entries in German and Portuguese. This database is a linguistic tool created primarily to facilitate the work of the staff of the UN system and other people around the world who participate or are interested in the organisation’s activities.
Conferencing technologies
UN Geneva provides a key international dialogue and diplomacy platform. The Division of Conference Management (DCM) facilitates these discussions and conferences by providing high-quality services (logistically and substantively) for UN agencies, international organisations, and highly sensitive political negotiations. You can find all the information about meetings and events on UN Geneva’s meeting and events calendar.
UN Geneva’s Fully Automated Speech-to-Text (FAST) project generates conference transcripts with the help of AI. Since the launch of the English version in 2019, FAST has scaled up to process thousands of hours of recordings per year, covering meetings for 40 UN entities. In 2022, UN Geneva rolled out French and Spanish transcription, with support from the International Organization of la Francophonie. The FAST project team has been collaborating with the machine learning researchers at WIPO to improve the latter’s proprietary speech recognition models on thousands of hours worth of UN Geneva’s training data in six languages. Thanks to the common pool of data shared by ILO, ITU, WIPO, WTO, and other international organisations, the retrained speech-to-text instances have become more relevant to, and accurate for, the conferencing environment and multilingual international speakers. The resulting raw transcripts are an essential building block for deploying further text analysis services underpinned by extractive or generative AI.
The Digital Recordings Portal is the online repository for all meetings recorded at the Palais des Nations and Palais Wilson. It is available in English and French, and the interface is compatible with standard accessibility tools and controllable via keyboard navigation. Since its update in 2022, meeting transcripts are generated in English, French, and Spanish and uploaded to the portal completely automatically. This allows those with hearing impairments to readily access the content of meetings held at UN Geneva. The portal also serves as a crucial tool for reporting on meeting outcomes. In 2022, more than 2,800 meetings were recorded and published on the portal, most of them in multiple languages.
With approximately 700,000 users across the globe, Indico.UN is the UN’s standard solution for participant management. The software establishes a web-based workflow, covering the creation of the event page and set-up of the registration form, participants registration, registration vetting, as well as badging and check-in activities. The system also has a series of elements related to the dissemination of information and documents, event statistics, timeline management, and accreditation of users in need of long-term badges. Indico.UN is a modular system, very easy to customise by the users of the UN system organisations.
The Extra-budgetary Cost Calculator is a financial planning tool that enables extra-budgetary conferencing clients to generate unofficial cost estimates on a self-service basis. Users can run multiple scenarios to match their available budgets by selecting which services to include or exclude, altering the duration of meetings/conferences and/or the requirements for meeting services and seeing the associated cost impact. The calculator includes costs for services provided by DCM (e.g. interpretation, documentation, and accessibility services), the Division of Administration (e.g. sound and audio-recording operators, technicians, mechanics, IT support), UN Library & Archives Geneva (e.g. cultural events), and the UN International School (UNIS) (e.g. webcasting).hives Geneva (e.g. cultural events), and the UN International School (UNIS) (e.g. webcasting).
The Datasphere Initiative is a think and do tank that catalyses meaningful dialogues and co-creates actionable and innovative approaches to respond to specific data challenges and opportunities across borders. Our mission is to equip organisations to responsibly unlock the value of data for all.
By connecting and amplifying voices from various sectors, we aim to responsibly unlock the value of data for all with various key programmes and projects that foster multistakeholder collaboration. Our latest work focuses primarily on digital access, data governance, and capacity development at various levels: global, regional, and youth.
Digital policy issues
Data governance
One of the key programmes of the Datasphere Initiative is the Global Sandboxes Forum. The Global Sandboxes Forum (GSF) is a collaborative platform that brings together public authorities, private sector entities, and civil society to explore and implement sandbox approaches for addressing digital age challenges. It focuses on sharing experiences, building capacity, and developing evidence-based guidance to empower stakeholders in creating agile, responsible data governance solutions at the local, national, and regional levels. Through its activities, the GSF aims to unlock the value of data for societal and environmental benefit. The latest publication, Sandboxes for AI: Tools for a new frontier, explores the role of sandboxes in the development and governance of artificial intelligence (AI).
Looking into specific regions, the initiative has launched the Africa Sandboxes Forum, a pan-African community aimed at enabling innovative cross-border data governance solutions. This multistakeholder process invites local, regional, and global experts to explore how regulatory and operational sandboxes can facilitate responsible data flows and exchanges, addressing challenges in sectors such as health, finance, sustainability, and AI across the continent. The latest publication, Africa Sandboxes Outlook: Thinking outside the box for responsible innovation in the age of AI, explores the growing use of sandboxes as tools for fostering innovation and enabling responsible regulatory experimentation. The launch of the report will be followed by a series of co-creation labs in various regions, with the first one taking place in Kigali, which will be the first of the Co-Creation Lab Series on Africa Sandboxes for AI.
Amplifying voices
The Youth4Data Lab Toolkit, published by the Datasphere Initiative, is designed to empower youth to actively engage in shaping a responsible digital future. It emphasises adaptable, innovation-focused governance through mechanisms such as regulatory sandboxes, policy labs, and hackathons. By providing practical tools and methodologies, the toolkit aims to foster youth-driven innovation in data governance, ensuring that young voices contribute meaningfully to the development of inclusive and effective digital policies.
Capacity development
Additionally, the Sandbox Summer School is an educational programme designed to equip participants with practical knowledge and hands-on experience in regulatory and operational sandboxes. This programme aims to build expertise in data governance, fostering innovation and cross-border collaboration among policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders.
Through these programmes, as well as seminars, roundtables, and consultations, the Datasphere Initiative strives to foster the creation of agile frameworks that responsibly unlock the value of data, ensuring that data governance evolves in tandem with technological advancements.
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