Uncategorized

Summary

This discussion focused on information integrity and climate change, examining how disinformation undermines climate action and democratic processes. The panel was organized by the Forum on Information and Democracy in Oslo, bringing together representatives from Brazil, the UN, UNESCO, and civil society organizations to address the intersection of climate science, information ecosystems, and internet governance.

Brazil’s leadership was highlighted through their Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, launched during their G20 presidency with UN and UNESCO partnership. The initiative includes a one million dollar pledge to a global fund and plans for a “call to action” leading up to COP30 in Belém. The UN’s Charlotte Scaddan presented the Global Principles for Information Integrity, emphasizing how climate disinformation serves dual purposes: undermining climate action and destabilizing democratic processes through polarization.

UNESCO’s Guilherme Canela stressed the need for a comprehensive ecosystem approach, moving beyond just training journalists to supporting all information producers including scientists, influencers, and advertisers while ensuring their economic sustainability and safety. Research findings from the International Panel on the Information Environment revealed that fossil fuel companies, politicians, and governments are primary sources of climate disinformation, with strategic skepticism replacing outright climate denialism.

A significant focus was placed on the role of advertising in funding disinformation through the attention economy. Harriet Kingaby from the Conscious Advertising Network explained how the opaque digital advertising ecosystem inadvertently funds climate disinformation while blocking legitimate climate content from monetization. The discussion emphasized that most research on climate disinformation comes from the Global North, creating a critical knowledge gap about information integrity challenges in developing countries.

The panel concluded with calls for multi-stakeholder collaboration, increased funding for research in the Global South, protection of environmental journalists and activists, and meaningful engagement with youth who are most affected by both climate change and information manipulation.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Global Initiative on Information Integrity and Climate Change**: Brazil, UN, and UNESCO launched a collaborative initiative with a dedicated fund (Brazil pledged $1 million) to address climate disinformation globally, leading up to COP30 in Brazil. This includes a “call to action” open to all stakeholders.

– **Economic Drivers of Climate Disinformation**: The advertising industry inadvertently funds climate disinformation through opaque digital advertising systems where brands unknowingly advertise on misleading climate content. The attention economy incentivizes divisive content over quality journalism.

– **Research Gaps and Evidence Base**: There’s a significant lack of research on climate disinformation impacts, particularly in the Global South. A new IPIE report analyzing 300 studies found that fossil fuel companies, politicians, and “scientists for hire” are key sources of strategic climate skepticism replacing outright denialism.

– **Multi-stakeholder Approach**: The discussion emphasized that no single actor can solve information integrity issues alone – it requires collaboration between governments, civil society, media, tech platforms, advertisers, and international organizations, with particular attention to protecting vulnerable communities and engaging youth.

– **Systemic Solutions Beyond Content Moderation**: Rather than focusing on individual pieces of misinformation, the panelists advocated for addressing underlying systems – improving media literacy, supporting environmental journalists’ safety and sustainability, increasing platform transparency, and reforming advertising incentives.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to present a comprehensive framework for addressing climate disinformation as both a climate action issue and a democratic governance challenge. The panelists sought to build momentum for coordinated global action leading up to COP30, emphasizing that information integrity is essential for effective climate response.

## Overall Tone:

The tone was professional and collaborative throughout, with a sense of urgency tempered by cautious optimism. Panelists acknowledged the severity and complexity of the challenges while highlighting concrete initiatives and solutions. The discussion maintained a constructive, solution-oriented approach, with speakers building on each other’s points rather than debating. The tone became more interactive and engaged during the Q&A session, with audience questions bringing in diverse global perspectives and practical concerns from the field.

Speakers

– **Camille Grenier**: Moderator from the Forum on Information and Democracy

– **Eugênio Garcia**: Director of the Department for Science, Technology and Intellectual Property at the Brazil Ministry of Foreign Affairs

– **Charlotte Scaddan**: Senior Advisor on Information Integrity at the United Nations Department of Global Communication

– **Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi**: Director of the Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation at UNESCO

– **Harriet Kingaby**: Co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, representing Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAD)

– **Fredrick Ogenga**: Member of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) and member of the Scientific Panel on Information Integrity about climate sciences

– **Audience**: Multiple audience members who asked questions during the Q&A session

**Additional speakers:**

– **Pavel Antonov**: Blue Link Action Network in Bulgaria and APC board member

– **Lee Cobb-Ottoman**: Ministry of Basic Education, South Africa

– **Agenunga Robert**: Democratic Republic of Congo, works at DRC-Uganda border, member of DRC National Assembly

– **Mbadi**: UNHCR, based in Pretoria

– **Larry Maggett**: CEO of Connect Safely, former journalist with CBS News, New York Times, LA Times, and BBC

– **Mikko Salo**: Finnish NGO Faktabar representative

– **Jasmine Ku**: From Hong Kong, former national youth representative of ALCOI

# Information Integrity and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Discussion Report

## Introduction and Context

The Forum on Information and Democracy convened a critical panel discussion in Oslo examining the intersection of information integrity and climate change. The session was moderated by Camille Grenier, who opened by highlighting the Forum’s dedicated work stream on this topic, co-led by Brazil and Armenia. The panel brought together representatives from international organisations, governments, and civil society to address how disinformation undermines both climate action and democratic processes.

Grenier emphasised the urgency of the topic, noting that environmental journalists are being murdered and that the Forum has documented systematic attacks on those investigating climate and environmental issues. The discussion featured speakers from Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations, UNESCO, and various advocacy organisations, alongside active participation from a diverse global audience.

The panel emerged against the backdrop of Brazil’s G20 presidency and the launch of an unprecedented Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, marking the first time information integrity has been prioritised at the G20 level. The timing proved particularly significant as the world prepares for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, and COP17 on biodiversity that Armenia will host, creating momentum for coordinated international action on climate disinformation.

## The Global Initiative: A New Framework for International Cooperation

### Brazil’s Leadership and G20 Integration

Eugênio Garcia, representing Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, outlined his country’s groundbreaking leadership in establishing information integrity as a G20 priority. The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change represents a trilateral partnership between Brazil, the United Nations, and UNESCO, with Brazil demonstrating concrete commitment through a one million dollar pledge to establish a dedicated global fund.

Garcia emphasised that this initiative marks a historic first in G20 discussions, elevating information integrity from a peripheral concern to a central element of climate governance. He referenced the Maceió declaration from the G20, which formally recognised these concerns. The Brazilian approach recognises that effective climate action requires not only sound policies but also a healthy information environment that enables informed public discourse and democratic decision-making.

Garcia introduced the concept of “mutirão,” a Brazilian cultural practice of collective work where communities come together to accomplish shared goals. He explained how this concept informs Brazil’s approach to the global initiative: “We want to build a mutirão, a collective effort where everyone contributes according to their possibilities and capacities.”

The initiative’s structure includes plans for a comprehensive “call to action” leading up to COP30, which will be open to all stakeholders—governments, civil society, private sector, and international organisations—to submit concrete proposals for addressing climate disinformation. Garcia outlined specific goals for this call to action: creating a repository of best practices, identifying gaps in current approaches, and developing concrete recommendations for policy makers. This inclusive approach reflects recognition that information integrity challenges cannot be solved through governmental action alone.

### UN Global Principles for Information Integrity

Charlotte Scaddan from the UN Department of Global Communication presented the Global Principles for Information Integrity, marking the anniversary of these principles. She explained that the principles provide a comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing information challenges across five key areas: societal trust and resilience, healthy incentives, public empowerment, independent free and pluralistic media, and transparency and research.

Scaddan highlighted a crucial insight from recent research: climate disinformation serves dual purposes, simultaneously undermining climate action and destabilising democratic processes through polarisation and institutional distrust. She noted that “we are in effect guinea pigs in an information experiment in which the resilience of our societies is being put to the test,” capturing the unprecedented nature of current information challenges.

The UN’s approach emphasises that climate disinformation has evolved beyond simple denial to more sophisticated strategies of delay and confusion. Research findings indicate that in countries like the United States, mainstream media continues to be a significant source of climate misinformation, challenging traditional assumptions about information distribution channels.

Scaddan also referenced the Global Digital Compact and the WSIS+20 process, noting how information integrity fits into broader digital governance frameworks. She emphasised that “people are most influenced by trusted local voices like pastors, teachers, and community leaders,” highlighting the need for community-based approaches.

### UNESCO’s Ecosystem Approach

Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi from UNESCO provided critical perspective on the systemic nature of information integrity challenges, drawing from lessons learned in previous climate communication initiatives. He shared his personal experience coordinating climate change and journalism initiatives 20 years ago, acknowledging that earlier efforts, whilst successful in their immediate goals, failed to anticipate the ecosystem-wide approach that disinformation actors would employ.

“When we were talking with them, or even with the scientists, the logic is the scientists want to know how to give better interviews for the journalists. The scientists were not even thinking that there was an important field of research on the issue of information integrity,” Canela reflected, highlighting how past approaches focused too narrowly on individual actors rather than understanding the broader information ecosystem.

UNESCO’s current approach recognises information as a public good requiring support for both supply-side actors (journalists, scientists, content creators) and demand-side empowerment (citizen education, media literacy). This comprehensive framework addresses not only content quality but also the economic sustainability of reliable information sources and the safety of those producing climate-related content.

Canela announced that UNESCO’s Global Fund will provide funding for research and investigative journalism, with an open call closing July 6th. He also mentioned plans to develop a global toolkit on data governance under the Broadband Commission with UNDP.

## The Economics of Climate Disinformation

### Advertising Industry’s Role and Opportunities

Harriet Kingaby from the Conscious Advertising Network provided illuminating insights into how the digital advertising ecosystem inadvertently funds climate disinformation whilst simultaneously blocking legitimate climate content from monetisation. She explained that of every advertising dollar spent, only about 41 cents actually reaches publishers, with the rest consumed by the complex advertising supply chain.

Kingaby presented specific examples of major advertisers appearing on climate disinformation content, including Money Supermarket and Get Your Guide, demonstrating how brands inadvertently fund harmful content due to the opacity of the advertising supply chain. She noted that the same platforms that demonetise legitimate climate content allow disinformation to flourish and receive advertising revenue.

“Most of this you know, I think there’s been plenty of cleverer people than me talking about that at this conference but the twist that I want you to take away is that this situation does not work for advertisers either and that actually creates opportunities for us to create powerful alliances,” Kingaby observed, reframing advertisers from adversaries to potential allies in addressing information integrity challenges.

The advertising supply chain’s opacity means that brands frequently have no visibility into where their advertisements appear or what content they inadvertently fund. This creates both a problem—where advertising revenue supports climate disinformation—and an opportunity for reform through increased transparency and accountability measures.

Kingaby emphasised that the same systems spreading climate disinformation also contribute to mental health crises among young people, creating additional urgency for addressing the underlying economic incentives that prioritise engagement over accuracy.

## Research Gaps and Evidence Challenges

### Global South Representation Crisis

Fredrick Ogenga, representing the International Panel on the Information Environment, presented sobering findings about the geographic concentration of climate disinformation research. Analysis of over 300 studies revealed that current research is concentrated in a handful of countries, with minimal representation from the Global South, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

“Out of 300 studies reviewed, only one was from South Africa,” Ogenga noted, illustrating the massive research gap that hampers evidence-based policy development in regions most vulnerable to climate change impacts. This disparity not only limits understanding of how climate disinformation operates in different contexts but also risks imposing solutions developed in the Global North onto regions with different information ecosystems and cultural contexts.

The research findings also revealed that fossil fuel companies, politicians, and “scientists for hire” remain primary sources of climate disinformation, but their tactics have evolved from outright denial to strategic scepticism designed to delay climate action rather than prevent it entirely.

### Evolution of Disinformation Tactics

Ogenga’s research highlighted a crucial shift in climate disinformation strategies: “Strategic scepticism is actually replacing climate denialism.” This evolution means that disinformation actors no longer need to convince people that climate change is false; instead, they focus on creating confusion about solutions, timelines, and the urgency of action.

This tactical shift requires corresponding evolution in response strategies, moving beyond simply providing accurate information about climate science to addressing more sophisticated forms of delay and confusion. The challenge becomes particularly acute when disinformation is designed to exploit legitimate scientific uncertainties or policy debates.

## Audience Engagement and Key Concerns

### Youth Participation and Mental Health

The discussion emphasised the critical importance of engaging young people as equal partners rather than token participants in climate information integrity efforts. Charlotte Scaddan stressed that “young people are deeply concerned about climate change but need meaningful engagement as equal partners rather than add-ons to processes.”

Audience member Jasmine Ku from Hong Kong highlighted a concerning gap: youth representatives at regional climate conferences are not incorporating information integrity into their statements and agendas, partly because overwhelming corporate greenwashing creates the impression that information problems are already being addressed.

Harriet Kingaby drew important connections between the attention economy, climate disinformation, and mental health crises among young people. She noted that the same systems that spread climate disinformation also promote despair rather than hope about climate action, exacerbating mental health challenges for the generation most affected by climate change.

### Cultural Context and Local Perspectives

A particularly thought-provoking intervention came from Lee Cobb-Ottoman from South Africa’s Ministry of Basic Education, who observed that “in the region where I come from, climate change is viewed as a white man’s problem. It is viewed as a matter of whether it is cold or it is hot. But in actual fact, what we see is that it means loss of life, loss of property, loss of assets, and displacement.”

This observation highlighted how climate communication can sometimes fail to resonate with local contexts and experiences, emphasising the need for culturally sensitive approaches that connect global climate challenges with local realities and concerns.

### Data Security and Indigenous Rights

Audience member Agenunga Robert raised critical concerns about data security for carbon credit projects and forest monitoring systems, particularly regarding information collected from indigenous territories. The discussion highlighted tensions between the need for transparent environmental monitoring and the protection of vulnerable communities whose data might be misused if compromised.

These concerns reflect broader questions about data governance in climate action, particularly regarding who controls environmental data, how it is stored and protected, and how benefits from data-driven initiatives like carbon credits are distributed among affected communities.

### Journalism Standards and Self-Regulation

Pavel Antonov raised questions about journalism standards and self-regulation in addressing climate disinformation. The discussion touched on the challenges of maintaining journalistic independence while ensuring accuracy in climate reporting, and the role of professional standards in combating misinformation.

## Protection of Environmental Information Sources

The panel addressed escalating threats faced by environmental journalists and climate defenders, with speakers noting increasing patterns of harassment, physical attacks, and digital surveillance targeting those investigating climate and environmental issues. These threats create a chilling effect that reduces the quantity and quality of environmental reporting precisely when such information is most needed.

The discussion revealed that threats extend beyond individual journalists to include scientists, environmental activists, and community leaders who document environmental degradation or advocate for climate action. This systematic targeting of information sources represents a direct attack on the information ecosystem’s capacity to provide reliable climate information.

## Multi-Stakeholder Solutions and Systemic Approaches

### Beyond Content Moderation

The panel consistently emphasised that addressing climate disinformation requires moving beyond reactive content moderation to proactive systemic reforms. Speakers advocated for addressing underlying incentive structures, economic models, and governance frameworks that enable disinformation to flourish.

This systemic approach recognises that individual pieces of misinformation are symptoms of broader structural problems in information ecosystems. Effective solutions must therefore address root causes rather than merely treating symptoms.

### Coalition Building and Industry Engagement

The discussion highlighted opportunities for building coalitions with unexpected allies, particularly in the advertising industry where economic interests may align with information integrity goals. Speakers emphasised that sustainable solutions require broad-based coalitions that include not only traditional advocacy groups but also business actors with economic incentives for change.

Kingaby committed to engaging advertisers at industry events like Cannes to promote information integrity principles, recognising the advertising industry’s potential role as both problem and solution in climate disinformation challenges.

### Community-Based Implementation

Speakers consistently emphasised the importance of community-based approaches that work through existing trust networks rather than attempting to impose external solutions. This approach recognises that information travels most effectively through established social relationships and trusted local voices.

## Concrete Action Items and Next Steps

### Immediate Initiatives

The panel outlined several concrete action items emerging from the Global Initiative. These include launching a Call to Action for COP30 that will be open to all stakeholders to submit proposals on information integrity and climate change, with the goal of creating a repository of best practices and developing concrete policy recommendations.

The initiative plans high-level side events at COP30 in Belém to showcase information integrity initiatives and maintain momentum for coordinated international action.

### Research and Capacity Building

The initiative includes plans to expand research efforts particularly in the Global South to fill critical evidence gaps identified by Ogenga’s research. UNESCO’s funding call represents one concrete mechanism for supporting this expanded research capacity.

### Timeline and Participation

The call to action process will run through the lead-up to COP30, with multiple opportunities for stakeholder engagement. The inclusive approach invites participation from governments, civil society, private sector, and international organisations, reflecting the multi-stakeholder approach that all speakers emphasised as essential.

## Conclusion

The discussion represented a sophisticated analysis of climate disinformation as both a technical challenge and a fundamental threat to democratic governance and climate action. The panel’s emphasis on systemic solutions, multi-stakeholder approaches, and community-based implementation reflects mature understanding of information integrity challenges that goes beyond simple content moderation to address underlying structural problems.

The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, with its concrete funding commitments and inclusive approach to stakeholder engagement, provides a promising framework for coordinated international action. The Brazilian concept of “mutirão” – collective effort where everyone contributes according to their capacities – captures the collaborative spirit needed to address these complex challenges.

However, the discussion also highlighted significant challenges ahead, particularly regarding research gaps in the Global South, protection of environmental information sources, and the need for culturally sensitive approaches that connect global climate concerns with local realities and experiences.

The panel’s recognition of unexpected allies, particularly in the advertising industry, and its emphasis on youth engagement as equal partners rather than token participants, suggests strategic thinking that may prove crucial for building sustainable coalitions for change. As the world prepares for COP30 in Belém, the initiative provides both a framework for action and a recognition that effective climate response requires not only sound policies but also healthy information ecosystems that enable informed democratic participation in climate governance.

The call to action leading up to COP30 represents a concrete opportunity for stakeholders worldwide to contribute to this collective effort, embodying the mutirão approach that Brazil has championed in bringing information integrity to the forefront of international climate governance.

Camille Grenier: Hello everyone, thanks so much for joining us for this very important discussion on information integrity on climate change, a discussion that is at somehow the crossroads of different issues, information integrity of course, climate change of course, but also, and this is why we’re here today in Oslo, internet governance and how the internet has reshaped our information ecosystems and what we can do about it to preserve access to reliable information on an issue, a crucial issue, that is climate change. Information integrity and climate disinformation, you will see this through the presentation of our panelists today, is a very important topic and it really, and we’ll have some evidence from researchers and colleagues, it really delays our ability to tackle climate change and to us at the Forum on Information and Democracy, it is also a democratic issue. It is a democratic issue when climate disinformation is weaponized for political purposes and political gains. It is a democratic issue when journalists who are investigating climate change, environmental issues, are targeted, are threatened, and in the worst case are murdered. And it is a democratic issue when access to information, to facts, to knowledge is undermined and we can clearly see today that all and a lot of knowledge institutions are being targeted for doing their work. And this is why at the Forum on Information and Democracy we launched a dedicated work stream with the signatory states of the Partnership for Information and Democracy on ensuring information integrity on climate change and other environmental issues. This work stream is co-led by Brazil and Armenia as Brazil will host, as a lot of you may know, COP 30 in November and as Armenia will host COP17 on biodiversity next year. The reason we launched this work stream is because we want to ensure that the answers that will be brought to this specific challenge also respect democratic principles. Democratic principles including transparency of powers, plurality of information, access to reliable information, and something that is really dear to our heart, the political and ideological neutrality of the information and communication space and the entities that structure this information space. Because I have the privilege of being the first one to talk, I will just stress on one specific point that is related to information integrity, the fact that to have information integrity we need people and institutions that provide reliable, independent, trustworthy information. And I would like to stress the importance of environmental journalists and the media that are doing this work of investigating climate change and environmental issues. And to us, we need to ensure that they can do their job freely and safely, that we have access to their facts and to their findings through social networks and throughout the information ecosystems, and that their work is also sustainable and we’re doing a lot of work on media sustainability these days. So thanks a lot. I would like to thank again all our panellists today, we’ll have a very important presentation on different efforts that are being done notably the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change that is led by actually three first panellists, Brazil, the UN, and UNESCO. And I would just like to start with you, Eugenio Garcia, the Director of the Department for Science, Technology and Intellectual Property at the Brazil Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If you could start by presenting Brazil’s leadership in this area. the Global Initiative and how the idea emerged and what are the challenges that the initiative aims to address and what is such a priority for Brazil. Thank you.

Eugênio Garcia: Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. I think for Brazil it’s clear that the climate crisis is real, it’s urgent and not something for tomorrow. And in Brazil we have been severely affected by extreme weather events. For example, in 2023 the drought in the Amazon rainforest was possibly the worst in history. And also the flooding in the south of Brazil last year, 2024, of course was a tragedy with many people displaced. But this is to show that these extreme weather events, they are affecting the life of people in a very direct way, because it’s not something that we think of global warming as something that’s not felt by people on the ground. And we have last year the G20, the Brazilian presidency of the G20, and we thought that would be, in terms of testing the waters, to see if we could include information integrity in the program, in the agenda for the, specifically the digital economy working group. And we had four priorities for this working group. One was universal and meaningful connectivity. The second, infrastructure, digital public infrastructure. Then the third, artificial intelligence. and the governance of AI, and the fourth priority that we presented to the G20 members was precisely information integrity. We didn’t know exactly the reaction or the feedback we would get from this discussion, but in the end we reached a consensus, and it was positive because it was the first time that the G20 addressed the information integrity. And we had a ministerial meeting in the city of Maceió, it’s in the north-east of Brazil, where you find these four priorities including information integrity. For those interested, you can download the Maceió declaration, just go make a search and it’s available in English for you to read later and how this topic was addressed by G20. Then, in the meantime, we have been discussing with the United Nations Secretariat in New York, in particular the Department of Global Communications, and UNESCO in terms of joining forces, and also other stakeholders. But the idea was to launch the global initiative on information integrity and climate change during the summit of the G20 in November 2024 in Rio de Janeiro. And that’s what we did in partnership with the UN and UNESCO, and I think for not only the Brazilian government, but this is a top priority. We pledged for the global fund, I think Guilherme will explain later the details of how the global fund is structured for this global initiative, but we pledged one million dollars that is, let’s say, adding to the G20. to what we say that’s important, but also showing that our commitment is really something that we mean, something extremely important. So I think in terms of coordinating efforts and talking to other stakeholders in different international organizations or different forums, for example G77, now we have COP30 coming in Belém do Pará, it’s next November as we know, and it’s a huge responsibility. So we want to create this global movement so that we have information like there’s a growing awareness of the importance of addressing this issue in terms of how we address climate change. And in terms of bringing this topic everywhere, let’s say the Global Digital Compact also mentioned information integrity. It’s interesting to highlight this because it was adopted by the UN in 2024 and UN member states committed to work together to promote information integrity, tolerance and respect in the digital space. And strengthen international cooperation to address the challenge of mis-slash-disinformation hate speech online. And by the way, also in the elements paper of the co-facilitators for the WSIS plus 20 process, they also mentioned information integrity, highlighting that stakeholders should promote information integrity, tolerance and respect in the digital space. This is dialogue with the GDC and protecting the integrity of democratic processes, strengthening international cooperation, and also trying to mitigate the risks of information manipulation in a manner consistent with international law. with International Law. So I think this is part of a global effort with our partners and in terms of engaging with COP30, I think that’s now we are trying to focus our action to, in terms of reaching November with some concrete initiatives. So you know that the president of COP30, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, in his first letter he mentioned the idea of a call to action, that we, it’s a mutirão. Mutirão is a Portuguese word from the indigenous communities in Brazil. The idea of having a collective endeavor, because in the village everybody would help each other to, in the spirit of coming together to deliver results. So the village would, each one would bring something, sometimes bring tools or materials or even skills to reach this collective endeavor, that’s the idea for mutirão. So we are now planning for the global initiative on information integrity on climate change, call to action. Of course other, I think my colleagues will also address some of the initiatives that are ongoing, for example we have a meeting in Bonn, I think Charlotte will talk about this, trying to integrate the global initiative and the action for climate empowerment. But this call to action that we will be launching soon is trying to integrate this agenda. with the COP30 and the goals, I think it would be useful to highlight some of them because these are joint efforts to contribute to this, what we hope this is a global movement with very concrete actions to promote information integrity, such as gathering and sharing data, rigorous research and evidence and knowledge on risks to climate information integrity including disinformation and impacts on climate action in line with the GDC. Also sharing practical tools, methods and materials to strengthen resilience against disinformation and promote information integrity on climate change. Developing communications campaigns, strategies and efforts designed to raise public awareness and foster a global culture of information integrity, including through trusted voices and influencers. These are the goals of this call to action. Fostering media sustainability, including its economic viability to cover environmental and climate change related issues. Supporting the protection of environmental journalists, activists, communicators and scientists. Protecting scientific data and data sets related to climate change. Promoting transparency and accountability in digital advertising to help address financial incentives for climate disinformation and foster climate information integrity. Fostering target media information in digital literacy related to climate change. And also donating financial resources to UNESCO’s Global Fund to help gather evidence and strategic communications including in professional journalism. To conclude, I think this call to action, that is the next step in the global initiative related to COP30, will contribute to including information integrity on climate change in the COP30 process by uniting efforts across borders and sectors and representing a pivotal step towards a global movement, as I said, for promoting information integrity on climate change.

Camille Grenier: So I will stop here, but I think that’s the idea, not what we are trying to achieve. And this call to action will be open to all stakeholders? Open to all stakeholders, so we will soon launch this and have the details and we will have a period where we will be assessing the contributions that we expect to receive and we are optimistic that we have received many proposals. So that’s the first call to action on the road to COP30. And I think that one thing that I find really remarkable with the work that Brazil is doing is bridging communities together, different communities. And the community working in journalism, on internet governance, and now on climate change. And I think bringing this community to our topics of information integrity is also very, very valuable. And I’m sure that the UN is also quite well-placed to do this kind of work. So Charlotte Skadden is Senior Advisor. If you could put on the slides, please, for Charlotte, who is a Senior Advisor on Information Integrity at the United Nations Department of Global Communication. And before you start, happy birthday, Charlotte. Because today is… It’s not my birthday. I mean, it’s not Charlotte’s birthday, sorry. It’s the first anniversary of the Global Principles on Information Integrity that were published exactly one year ago. I thought you were going to tell her age. No, I would not. Sorry. So, Charlotte, can you tell us a little bit more about the UN role in strengthening climate information integrity globally with a focus on policy, public diplomacy and communications, of course, in court in the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity?

Charlotte Scaddan: I will. And thank you, Camille, for mentioning the anniversary, which of course I’m going to touch on. And frankly, to me, it’s actually more important than my own birthday with the amount of effort that we put into developing the global principles. So I’ll just start by giving some context. As you all know, the UN has, I’m sure you’re very familiar with our work on climate change. And it’s a huge priority for us, climate action. But more recently, information integrity has also become a major priority. And of course, there’s a range of initiatives going on around the UN related to information integrity. But I wanted to touch on two today. And one, of course, is the Global Principles for Information Integrity that, as you mentioned, were launched a year ago today by the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. And the principles, for those of you who aren’t familiar with them, are, I think, a groundbreaking framework for action for a safer, more inclusive information ecosystem. And they put forward, we put forward five of these principles, recommendations for different stakeholders around five principles. And you see them on the screen here. They are societal trust and resilience, healthy incentives, public empowerment, independent, free and pluralistic media, and last but not least, transparency and research. So the principles frame information integrity as an information ecosystem where freedom of expression is fully enjoyed and where accurate, reliable information, free from discrimination and hate, is available to all in an open, inclusive, safe, secure information environment. And this entails a pluralistic information ecosystem. , the global information space that fosters trust, knowledge, and individual choice for all. So, actually, in the past year since we launched, the response has been really overwhelming. We’ve seen government, civil society, media, businesses, and other really harness these principles through activities and efforts around the world. So we go into work on information integrity and to implement the global principles with our eyes wide open. Because the challenge before us is formidable. And the threat landscape is vast. Risks include mis and disinformation. I think everyone is generally familiar with those. As well as hate speech and harassment. But we also see other risks that are more structural or political. So suppression of independent news media. And suppression of academic and civil society work and voices. Denying of access to information. The defunding or removal of public sources of information. And, of course, top of mind now. The threat landscape is vast. And the threat landscape is vast. And the threat landscape is vast. And, of course, top of mind now are risks related to emerging tech. Emerging technologies. Including Gen AI. Because we see tech companies continue to integrate AI into our everyday applications at breakneck speed. They are not slowing down, as we know. People are now increasingly reliant on this tech to shape their understanding of the world and everything that’s happening in it. But while Gen AI tools are proliferating in the public domain, they can’t uniformly be used in the public domain. And that’s a challenge. Because while Gen AI tools are proliferating in the public domain, they can’t uniformly be relied on for accurate information. And we see ongoing tests and studies that show that, you know, these tools frequently do not distinguish between rigorous science on the one hand and dirty data or outright nonsense on the other. And yet, people are accessing this flawed data, but they’re not equipped to assess its veracity or reliability, which can contribute to one of the most devastating consequences of AI. And that’s a challenge. So, this is a major leadership leap in AI and the value that we see from it. But people are now increasingly relying on Gen AI tools and testing them. And yet, we see ongoing tests and studies that show that, you know, these tools frequently do not distinguish between rigorous science on the one hand and dirty data or outright nonsense on the other. And yet, people are accessing this flawed data, but they’re not equipped to assess its veracity or reliability, which can contribute to what we see as a deeply concerning trend, that is, the lack of trust in any information source and in the information ecosystem more broadly. People just don’t know what they’re doing. what’s real, what to believe. We are in effect guinea pigs in an information experiment in which the resilience of our societies is being put to the test. So in short, the spectrum of risks is broad and it goes way beyond just the false information itself. The issues impacted are also wide ranging and it really touches on all areas of the UN’s work and what we need for a sustainable future and functioning democracies. When it comes to climate, the motivations and impacts are twofold. Purveyors of climate disinformation and hate obviously seek to undermine climate action, right? And we’ve seen the fossil fuel industry and others including state actors pour billions into this over decades. But we also see climate change used as a wedge issue to polarize, to disrupt, to destabilize democratic processes, particularly around elections and we always will see a spike around pivotal societal moments. We know enough to be able to make these conclusions but the evidence base ranges and while there’s some strong research from major academic institutions and civil society organizations, including IPIE as we’ll hear shortly, much of this research is concentrated in a handful of countries where the support and funding have been focused up to now. And as many of us here know really well, this support has been under attack and politicized, especially in recent months with researchers, civil society and others targeted. So that’s why our focus on research is really key. From our own limited research efforts, we’ve identified a range of tactics used in attempts to undermine climate-related information. The narratives used as part of these tactics, which you see a list here of a sample of them and I’ll just mention a few. They range from there being no scientific consensus around climate to climate change is a manufactured political tool and a scapegoat for domestic policy issues and failures to globalist elites. using climate issues as a means of justifying totalitarian policies and even to control the weather. And, you know, sometimes when I say that last one about controlling the weather, I get kind of sniggers, but in fact, you know, this is actually coming from leading political figures. And these claims are used to kind of steadily erode trust in academic scientific institutions, in the UN, in COP and the COP process, and also to isolate people to certain information sources, which are often very localized. And what we’ve seen is that underlying a lot of these tactics is what we call the us versus them, the constructed enemy, adversarial stance. It’s painting those who support climate action as elites serving only their own interests. And these behaviors are not in the fringe. They’re in the mainstream of information spaces, and they’re being used by influential figures, both state and non-state actors. So what can we do? Well, as laid out in the global principles, first and foremost, we need multi-stakeholder action. It’s a very UN term, I think, but it’s really a valid one. Obviously, and this brings me to the next example, you know, a really leading example of this is our global initiative that we just heard about, and it’s really a major priority for us at the UN as we approach COP. Our response has to be multifaceted and include prevention and mitigation measures across the information ecosystem. This includes strategic communications and advocacy, of course, political engagement, human rights-based policy, and community engagement. We need to recalibrate our previous thinking about the information ecosystem and the information landscape so that we better understand people’s relationship to information sources today, which is often playing out in very niche spaces and at the community level. What many institutions have long thought, and I include the UN in that, have long thought as mainstream media is no longer mainstream. The mainstream has shifted, and that’s true across many geographies. we need to immediately identify and fill information voids because if we don’t fill them, the disinformation actors will, and they’ll do it quickly and without hesitation. And we need to think longer-term about building trust and how we can keep attention by carefully considering our tone and language around climate issues and going about gauging communities with humility and respect so that we avoid reinforcing that us-versus-them trap. When it comes to structural obstacles, what has become really crystal clear to us is that we need to expand and engage our circle of stakeholders. And that includes the advertisers who fund the digital ecosystem and as such have unique power. They can act quickly and effectively to mitigate harms and influence digital platforms in ways that we cannot. And that’s why just a few days ago, I was with colleagues from organizations represented here on stage at CanLion, which is the biggest and most important annual gathering of the ad industry. And we took our message of information integrity to that key audience. And I’m really happy that Harriet is here to explain the advertising angle in more detail. It’s somewhere where it’s an angle that we’re really going to be focusing on a lot in coming months. So I’ll just end by saying, you know, we don’t have time to spare. I mean, the urgency and the scale of this challenge require active coalitions and collaborations so that we can increase global resilience. And we need to find those entry points for action before it’s too late. So I’ll leave you with that. Thanks.

Camille Grenier: Thank you. Thank you so much Charlotte. I think one thing I take from the presentation is really to have this sort of broad approach gathering all the stakeholders, including advertisers. I’m sure we’ll get back to that in a moment. Guilherme from UNESCO. Guilherme Canela is the Director of the Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation. You’ve been also a leader in that space and also working on… who has done a lot on freedom and safety of journalists. We’re really glad to have you on stage and to have you talk a little bit complementing what has already been said on the Global Initiative, maybe more specifically around UNESCO’s approach on this and about the fund that has been mentioned already, and also the work that UNESCO is doing with interconnected issues, notably on safety of journalists, for example.

Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi: Thank you, Camille. It’s a pleasure to be here with all these fantastic colleagues in the panel. Let me start by telling you a story. Twenty years ago, when I was not an international bureaucrat and I was doing intelligent things in my life, I coordinated an initiative about climate change and journalism in the media. And it’s interesting to look 20 years back, this was for Latin America, on what were our mistakes on that time. Because we didn’t notice, and this was a huge mistake, that we couldn’t face the issue looking into just one of the actors. So we lose what the bad actors already knew at that time, the ecosystem logic of this. So the initiative, that one that I did 20 years ago, was very successful in its goals. Our initiative was to train journalists to speak, to cover better climate change. But when we were talking with them, or even with the scientists, the logic is the scientists want to know how to give better interviews for the journalists. The scientists were not even thinking that there was an important field of research on the issue of information integrity, to use an anachronistic word, because we didn’t have that expression at that time. So what we were betting our horses is that if we train the information producers at the time, the journalists, we will solve the problem. And this was a huge mistake of our part because we were not prepared enough to think the rest of the ecosystem. So the initiative here and what Charlotte was describing in terms of the information integrity concept is very much related to this broader idea that information is a public good. And then in UNESCO we simplified that with three pillars, right? If we consider information as a public good we need to empower the citizens to interact with the ecosystem, right? It’s education, it’s media and information literacy, so on and so forth. But this is a necessary condition but it’s not a necessary and sufficient condition because it’s unfair to say to my uncle or to my grandmother, well don’t circulate this thing you received in the whatsapp or whatever, knowing that on the other side of the fence you have trillion dollar companies, either fossil fuel companies or companies that are relying a lot on this attention economy. So it’s unfair to put only on the shoulders of the society to solve the problem, but it’s necessary. So this is qualifying the demand. The other pillar is that we need to qualify the supply. So 20 years ago when I was doing those intelligent things we thought that qualifying of the supply was to support the journalists, but that was wrong. We need to support the scientists, we need to support the influencers, we need to support the advertisers, all those that are sending inputs to the system and to guarantee that this support is enough for to do this in a reliable and accurate manner, but also they need to survive. Advertisers are doing quite well but the journalists are not, or the scientists. So we need also to deal with the economic issue, but also with the safety issue. 20 years ago the journalists were telling us, well there is an issue. and the other groups, we have a lot of people who are saying we have an issue here and there, but no one was saying I’m being attacked because I’m covering climate change. Now we hear that all the time. And it’s not only attacked online, which is already a big issue. They are being attacked physically. They are being attacked with massive slaps everywhere. So there is also a complexity here in protecting the supply side of the story. So we have to look at the other side of the story. And the other side of the story is what Charlotte was explaining. How we deal with the transmission chain, right? With the ecosystem that includes the social media companies, the governance, now the AI and whatever. So it’s not one thing or the other. It’s one thing and the other. And that’s why it’s so complex. So the initiative wants to look into this, recognizing this complexity, but telling, look, there is one particular element that is missing, right? And that is the lack of governance mechanisms. And particularly in the global south, as I guess you are going to speak about your recent findings, that’s, yes, we have anecdotical evidence that there is disinformation out there. Lots of people are debunking this disinformation. But we don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes, right? Who is funding this disinformation? What are the systems of distribution? What are the conflicts of interest that are there? And the fund that we launched, there is an open call for those interests, Global Initiative on Information Integrity, open call, you will find it, you can apply until July the 6th, closing the propaganda element. The idea is precisely how we can collect more evidence to support our work, our work in the strategic communications in the U.N. and UNESCO and others, the work of foreign information and democracy and non-devocacy, and the work of governments, on governance, and so on and so forth. So that’s the idea. And basically, we are going to fund research and investigative journalism in these areas. So, to conclude a bit and coming back to my initial story of 20 years ago, when I was training those many journalists in Latin America and discussing climate change, for not a second in any of those hundreds of trainings I did with my team, we were including in the conversation of the journalists the need for them, and today for others, to understand information integrity as part of the problem. They were only looking into the climate change component. And this, it’s not working. We need to look into this connection between those two words. And for me, this is a bit of the beauty of this, and also it’s already a positive message. Because not only us, when I say Brazil, UN and UNESCO, there is, and as Eugênio mentioned, the elements paper of the WSIS is including information integrity, the Global Digital Compact did. So, in that sense, I think there is room for optimism, because there is a concern, and this concern is raising different elements across the board. Thank you.

Camille Grenier: Thank you so much, Guilherme. So, supply, demand and distribution. And as we’ve seen on and on, more access, better access to data, to have a better understanding of what’s actually happening out there, and in these really opaque information ecosystems. Let me now turn to Harriet, and I think we have some slides again, if we can have them. Harriet King-Gabi, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, and also representing today CAD, which is the Climate Action Against Disinformation. And as already mentioned, with you will, and it’s a very interesting presentation, take a deep dive into ad-funded risks to climate information integrity.

Harriet Kingaby: Thank you so much and thank you for the warm welcome today. So for those of you that don’t know, the Conscious Advertising Network is a broad coalition of over 190 brands, advertising agencies and civil society groups. We exist to essentially ensure effective advertising works for everybody. And happily I can say that we are a very practical application of the multi-stakeholder approach that I’ve heard a lot about at this conference. What we essentially do is we know that advertising is causing human rights issues and we know that civil society has the deep knowledge there. We know that advertisers understand the advertising ecosystem extremely well and so we bring those groups together to try and look for solutions. Essentially, as Charlotte said, we’ve just come back from the Cannes Festival of Advertising and although the language that is used is very different, although the way the issues are presented is very different, I can assure you that the issues of information integrity were discussed there incredibly passionately and almost as passionately as I’ve seen them discussed here. I have to say, business is framing them in terms of the business case and I want to unpack that a little bit for you today. But I want to just start out by addressing the elephant in the room, which is that obviously advertisers are on one side of things part of the problem. This is a quote from the IPCC report, Climate Change Impacts Adaption and Vulnerability, that talks about the vested political, organised and financed misinformation and contrarian climate change communication, which is undermining information integrity around climate change. Yes, the advertising industry itself is producing some of that disinformation. Yes, it’s working with clients such as fossil fuel clients that are part of the problem. However, I want to just tell you that this is only a part. of the way that advertising interacts with information integrity and I hope that I can convince you that advertisers can also be a part of the solution today. So this is a hideous graphic but I think it illustrates the attention economy quite well. Advertising is essentially the funding model behind the attention economy and therefore the reason that addiction is designed into the system. Advertising funds the media, it funds the platforms, it funds our more traditional media ecosystem and online the longer we can be kept scrolling, the longer our attention can be kept, the more ads can be served to us and therefore the more profit the platforms can make. And what this has done is this has completely changed the incentive structures behind the production and distribution of content. So quality used to be pretty high up on the agenda, informing citizens, entertaining citizens but in fact now the emphasis on content production is about keeping us hooked, sucking us in and keeping us hooked essentially. And this is creating unhealthy incentives for the production of content that has devastating consequences for information integrity around really important issues such as climate change. Most of this you know, I think there’s been plenty of cleverer people than me talking about that at this conference but the twist that I want you to take away is that this situation does not work for advertisers either and that actually creates opportunities for us to create powerful alliances that can really, really take on some of this system. So let me explain if I can get the clicker to work. Essentially this is too small for you to read maybe but what you need to know is that the global advertising market is enormous. We’re talking one trillion. and Gigi Hadid, thank you so much for joining us. Advertising has grown by over $1 billion as of this year. And it’s growing. And in particular, the digital component of this system is growing. Now, what this means is the problems that we’re talking about today are being amplified. And accelerated. And therefore, they are becoming really business critical for advertisers to understand and to tackle. Much as democracy relies on a sense of shared reality, on trust, advertising also relies on trust. So, where you have a fall in trust in our information ecosystems, advertising also starts to become less effective. So, what this means is businesses are paying more for less return on their advertising spend. And falling trust in information, essentially, is a shared problem that we’re both looking at. Now, at the heart of this problem is the fact that the advertisers are paying more. And they’re paying less. And they’re paying less. And they’re paying less. And they’re paying less. And they’re paying less. And the other part of this problem is the fact that the advertising ecosystem is so incredibly opaque. If you think about how we consume media now, you know, my journey through the media ecosystem will be completely different to Guillermo’s today. It will be different to Charlotte’s. It will be different to all of yours. And the technology required to track me around my personalized media journey and to serve me ads is enormous. There are many actors in this system, many technology companies that do things like this. And they’re all doing it. And they’re all doing it. And they’re all doing it. And there are many actors in this system, many technology companies that do things like collect my data, process that data, work out what ads to serve me, kind of do online auctions to make sure I see the ads that I’m supposed to see. And unlike other corporate supply chains, unlike the supply chain to make this shirt, for example, advertisers have no idea where their advertising is going and what it is funding. There’s no know your customer law. There’s no mapping of those supply chains. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. And so, what happens is people take advantage. the platforms are taking large amounts of money. And this is coming at the cost of publishers. So we’ve heard about the fall in advertising revenue to publishers, and the impact that’s having on the news system. We heard about news deserts this morning. And there was a report that found that out of every dollar that an advertiser spends and puts into this system, only $0.41 of it actually reaches the publishers. And that used to be much, much more. So the rest of it is swallowed up by organizations like Google, and frankly, organizations we’ve never heard of. And all of this compounds the problem. If you’ve got less reporting on important topics, you’re degrading information integrity, you’ve got less trust. So this is fueling the production and distribution of climate disinformation. And it’s tempting to think that businesses can be opposed to climate action. And sometimes this is true. But there are vast categories of businesses that need us to solve the climate crisis in order to survive. Think about the businesses that make coffee and chocolate or wine. Think about the insurance industry, for example. And essentially, advertisers alone don’t have the tools to solve this problem. They need to work with us, everyone here, in order to make that happen. So I want to show you what I mean, the issues that this system is causing. So writing on this is small for those of you who can’t see it. The advertiser, it’s a screen grab from YouTube. So the advertiser here is called Money Supermarket. They help UK consumers to get quotes from their insurance companies. So they work a lot with insurance companies. And they are advertising on disinformation that suggests that Hurricane Hélène, which went through the US, is somehow linked to the US government controlling the weather. Now, as Charlotte mentioned. This kind of disinformation creates distrust in the institutions that are supposed to help us when extreme weather events happen. It’s also pretty bad for the insurance industry because it slows efforts to sort out the problem. Here is YouTube advertising on its own channels against content spreading disinformation about the clean-up efforts from the Valencian floods that killed hundreds of people. And again, the clean-up efforts were undermined by climate disinformation. This is white percentage points of the Spanish GDP. This situation is not good for business, it is not good for us, but it is not good for them either. And here is Get Your Guide on Oeste, a Brazilian channel with nearly 3 million followers, promoting a narrative which was used during the 2023 Rio Grande disaster as a way to discredit government clean-up efforts. Again, this slowed efforts to help. And, you know, this is still earning money two years later. The reason that I draw your attention to this is this is not content that is organic, this is content that is earning money for its creators. So I’ve singled out YouTube here, but I can find you examples on TikTok and other channels of this, and I can find you examples of creators earning money from this. Nobody wants this system to continue. Not us, not you, not advertisers. Because essentially, not only are they wasting their money, but they’re also putting their brands at reputational risk. So, together, we need to address this. Not one single actor has the power to sort this out. But we do need to start moving conversations on with the platforms away from content, away from individual pieces of content and whack-a-mole, to talking about systems change and the business model. So, UN Global Principles and Information Integrity are a fantastic way of doing that, of looking at that through this systemic lens. So, I’m going to wrap up, I promise. Final slide. The things I want to talk about today are about essentially taking on the information economy. In order to engage advertisers in this situation, we need to be talking about the system which is drawing people in in order to serve them more ads, and therefore prioritizing content which is divisive or untrue. Next, we need to drive transparency through this incredibly opaque system at scale. And I’ll talk more later on about a case study we have of how that can lead to great business outcomes as well as outcomes for society. And also, once they get a handle on their supply chain, they can start to think about investing in pluralistic media and news. So, to summarize, this is good for business and it’s good for us. So, working together in these multi-stakeholder approaches can only bring us better solutions.

Camille Grenier: Thank you so much for this deep dive into the economics of disinformation, much to do indeed with all the different related stakeholders. You mentioned that democracy, we need a sense shared of reality. And that makes a nice transition to our next guest, Frederic Oguenga. Frederic, you are a member of the IPIE, the International Panel on the Information Environment. And you were a member of the Scientific Panel on Information Integrity about climate sciences. You worked for several months, I think nine months, to get to the report that was published last week. And we would like to have this deep dive on what does research tell us about climate disinformation? Because I think that we also need this. This is a global assessment, if we are to come up with appropriate answers. Frederic, the floor is yours. And I think we have to say it again. There you are. Yeah, so, interesting. Thank you so much for the organizers to, first of all, welcome us in Oslo. The IPIE is an entity that looks at the integrity of information environment across the board.

Fredrick Ogenga: So, climate information environment is also one of those things that we look at. And so, what I’m going to talk about today is a report that we compiled over a period of 12 months, looking at about 300 articles and using qualitative and computational methods, as well as quantitative methods to arrive at, which includes also data visualization. But I won’t really go dive into that for the case of time. I want to tell you about really what we found out. We used the linear model of communication by Harold Laswell, which really talks about, because what I’m gathering here in the panel today is there is a crisis in the information environment on climate change. There is clearly a crisis, and that crisis is what made us wonder. And as panelists, which was led by Jensen, Klaus Jensen from the University of Copenhagen, we realized that if you use the communication model, then you realize that there are people who produce those messages, the source, you know, senders of the message, the initiators of the message, and then the channel and the messaging, and then the consequences of their messaging, and then, of course, after that, what then can we do about that kind of messaging? So if you look at that… We are talking about who the actors were, the messages and the channels that they used, their key audiences, and what the consequences of their messaging was, and what solutions we ought to have in that process. So 300 articles were looked at, and then after looking at those articles, we basically inspected the gaps and came up with recommendations. So the first culprits in terms of sources or actors in the datafication of the information environment on climate change is actually fossil fuel companies, corporations, we have politicians, we do have governments, and also some states. We also have legacy and social media, and scientific hands for hire, these are people who are hired to write something about climate change in favor of a particular position. And for example, if I just take a quick example, in countries like the US and North America, we found out that the mainstream media is still led in terms of spreading false information about climate, and this kind of information varied based on the type of media. If it was a conservative media or right-leaning media, you’d see the kind of messaging that come about in those kinds of platforms, and their messages were actually those that disputed the science about climate change, and this is where we find people like the US president, which we saw in the previous slide. So there we also realize that not much is known about the impact of what social media does. in terms of the messaging in social media and how social media therefore impacts on audiences in ways that can be measured and analysed to come up with countermeasures. And so that is one of the gaps that we saw. So this also has been touched around here because we do have a level where there’s no transparency in digital platforms, especially on those who, the people who are owners, the owners of the platforms and those who produce data in those platforms. And so eventually, the messaging, overall messaging that emerged is that strategic scepticism is actually replacing climate denialism. So people are strategically frustrating or obscuring climate science in order to delay the climate response, to cut into the chains of those in the policy line of coming up with measures that are supposed to address climate change and effectively derailing climate interventions. And again, we saw that classic media, of course, is leading in that arena. And I talked about how really it’s still not clear on how social media is impacting directly on audiences. So if this is the scenario, then the kind of messages that we see, the message of obscurity, contrarianism and the climatist cataclysm is something that we see impacting on the information environment on climate change. And these are things that we need to address and deal with. So the key audiences that are supposed to be in the leading front, in the front lines. of climate interventions, who are usually actually policy makers, are derailed and they are targeted. They are targeted by misinformation, and this misinformation also feeds into the policy chain and eventually affects climate intervention. So something needs to be done there. And therefore, effectively, generally, what this does, and panelists have mentioned this, is that it erodes public trust on climate science and also trust in institutions that are responsible for addressing climate change. So it has a double, a dual effect, and if that happens then it becomes challenging to address climate change going forward. So the IPIE in our report, we came up with a few recommendations and about measures that we can take to address the crisis of information integrity on climate science. And one of those measures, some of them have been mentioned, is we need to educate people, we need some level of education, whether it’s on the science of climate change or even the medium that transmits climate change. Because from the model that I began talking about, the linear communication model, we saw that media and channel go hand in hand. So if you educate audiences, our stakeholders, about the media that transmits climate change information and the science of climate change, then we might really go towards getting some level of success in climate intervention. We also have to look at the regulatory and policy environment. and many other stakeholders and government and civil societies coming out and pointing out those people who are responsible for doing what is called greenwashing and to what extent can you litigate on those issues. It’s a grey area, it’s a contentious area and the data is still minimal. So that’s one area that I think it’s an opportunity to explore further in terms of research. And then, I think I’ve touched them all, yes, there’s one that I didn’t talk about which is called counterpublics. Counterpublics are simply, I think, I heard about it from my Brazilian colleague and from my UNESCO colleague here, about how we bring different voices from different spaces to form a coalition of counterpublics who are responsible to counter false discourses and misinformation from these powerful forces that are driving misinformation about climate change. So it’s a coalition of collaboration about defending truth about climate science and also scientists that are responsible for defending climate science and the integrity of information about climate science. I think I’ll leave it there and explore more in the Q&A. Thank you so much.

Camille Grenier: Thank you so much, Frederic. please do take a look at the report. It’s a rather longish report, 127 pages, I think, but there is a very streamlined executive summary that also brings the main conclusion and policy recommendations which are very, very useful in this specific field. We still have a little bit more than half an hour, and we wanted to make sure that we also have an interactive section. We’ve been talking a lot about multi-stakeholderism, so if there are some questions in the room, I think there is already one person and then one there. So maybe we can take the two, and the first two questions, and have…

Audience: Yes, can you please introduce yourself? Thank you very much. My name is Pavel Antonov with Blue Link Action Network in Bulgaria and the APC board. This is seriously becoming my favorite panel since the morning when I heard the one on integrity of journalism. My network supports climate defenders in the Climate Coalition, and as a journalist, it’s extremely interesting to listen to all the solutions you presented. What we have come across is that the climate defenders, as well as other activists around there, seem to… we seem to automatically sort of say they’re the good guys, and we expect always automatically that the problems lie from the industry and from elsewhere, which is true in most cases. But what we realize is that there is a certain lack of norms, lack of standards, that even the climate activists are coming to complain about at some point. They say the information environment has become so volatile, so fractured, we can’t even operate healthily in it. So we thought, what if we come back to the norms of journalism as they used to be 20 years ago? The ones that were saying you need to double-check your sources and offer the opposite point of view to your opponent, even if you disagree, and so on. And we offer this to the broader public, but to the climate defenders, to the civil society as a start, and see how they could abide with that same norms. Will they stop seeking for clicks? Will they stop communicated ungrounded information, would they be willing to take this responsibility? I wanted to hear what do you think about this? Do you think that might actually work as a self-regulatory approach? Thank you. Thank you so much. Hello, my name is Lee Cobb-Ottoman. I come from South Africa. I work for the Ministry of Basic Education. In the parts of the world where I come from, climate change is viewed as a white man’s problem. It is viewed as a matter of whether it is cold or it is hot. But in actual fact, what we see is that it means loss of life, loss of property, loss of assets, and displacement. Now, what are the ethics in information sharing and information dissemination when it comes to climate change and climate action and education for sustainable development? Given that, we don’t want to incite fear, but we’re working with a society that will not do anything unless it responds to a problem. And so you want to then create that picture that this is the problem that you are facing as the African continent and as the world. This is the problem. You’re not inciting fear. Yet, when you find people who are really doing great work about teaching Africans like myself about the impact of climate change in our lives, you’re always going to be seen as somebody who’s inciting fear and anxiety on people. So what are the ethics? What do we need to do? And how far can we go really to ensure that there is that balance of teaching people about this thing as being an issue of sustainability, but also an issue of safety? Thank you so much. Thank you. My name is Agenunga Robert. I come from Democratic Republic of Congo. I work at the border with DRC and Uganda. My submission or question is so much concerned with the information I have noted from different panelists. In the region where I come from, there is massive data collection going on for carbon credit project. Data being collected from indigenous territories, data from community forest. My concern is not about who collect this data, but my worry is where are they keeping this data? What protocols are in place for them to store this data without harming indigenous people or forest dependent community? Because in case this data get leaked or is compromised, it will have a very dangerous consequences on indigenous people and forest dependent community. Because I have seen it in Congo where land is being stolen and forest given away to foreign investors to mine critical minerals needed to power AI and other things. So, that is very painful. But also, when you look at the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on situation of environmental defenders under ARUS Convention, Mr. Michel Faust, he noted recently that environmental activists and human rights defenders who work on issues of climate justice are not only targeted physically, but also emotionally. and the other one is that they have no legal intimidation but also their surveillance and their data is spied by government. In Brazil, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and also in Indonesia, these are three major forest places where activists are at risk. And I don’t know at UNESCO level, a colleague from UNESCO, what international mechanisms are in place to ensure that members’ countries abide by so that data concerning forest, indigenous territories or even security of defenders working on forest and climate justice is protected. Myself, I worked for 12 years as a digital security trainer helping indigenous people in the Congo Basin to communicate and work safely. But beginning from January 2024, I became a member of parliament in the DRC National Assembly but I see myself more as an activist who took himself to the parliament because in government there is a lot of bureaucracy and I continue with the activism helping human rights defenders, environmental activists and indigenous people to protect their land. But now we have the big threat is the project by Brazil which is called, it is called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. My colleague from Brazil should be aware of this. This is a multi-billion project scheduled to be launched in Brazil at the COP, the next COP. This project, if developed, it means indigenous people or forest-dependent community can receive 4% of contribution being made from the sale of carbon credit generated from their forest. And for this to be quantified, data need to be collected on the carbon potential of forestry. And last month we had a meeting of three forest world basin in Brazzaville in Congo, people from Indonesia, Brazil, and Congo basin and also Rwanda gathered in Brazzaville for a week. And the question here was data integrity, who is using this data, how will a local chief know that his forest is the one providing global environmental benefit, yet he doesn’t have the data. And what make Brazzaville and other partner government to only remit 4% of the total benefit arriving from, you know, carbon credit of arriving from climate benefit being provided by forest countries providing benefit of climate mitigation.

Camille Grenier: Thank you. Thank you so much for your question. I like how we touched upon the vast majority, the vast topics, all the different topics that we can include in the concept of information integrity ranging from journalism and the ethics of journalism to data governance. So, before turning and giving the floor to other questions, I don’t know if some of you would like to react and answer some of the questions, would you like to go first?

Charlotte Scaddan: Sure. Perhaps I could speak to the second question about fear, which I think is, I can’t actually see the gentleman who asked, yeah, there you go. Thank you for asking that question. It’s an excellent one. And I can tell you it’s one that as communicators on climate we have been grappling with for a very long time. And what we have learned over a period of many years is that, you know, yes, fear can be a motivator, but fear is not going to inspire people. And I think there are ways that one can communicate the urgency and gravity of the climate crisis without necessarily resorting to fear. and the other is the real world. People need to understand the real, the situation that we’re facing. There’s no getting around it. But what they also need to know is what they can do about it or what the government can do about it. What actions they can actually take. They need to see specific examples of especially community-led actions. I think that’s what people can really relate to. In terms of the impacts, I think that’s what we need to look at. I think that when we talk about climate change, it becomes this overwhelming topic, right? You just want to shut down. Because you feel that you can’t, you feel that you can’t do anything about it on an individual level. And that’s true, right? We need to look to the fossil fuel industry and governments and others to take action. But I think that there are steps that we can all take, including if we live in democracies, we can vote, right, for candidates who support climate action. But we also need to look at the impact of climate change on people’s lives, right? And we need to look at what are some of the individual impacts, the economic impacts, but also the economic benefits of climate action, right? How does it affect people’s wallet? How does it affect people’s daily lives? And their quality of life. So, I think that, yes, it’s important to stress the reality

Camille Grenier: of the situation. And that might be scary. But equally, it’s important at the same time to offer really solid solutions and the way forward. So, I think that’s the way forward. Thank you very much.

Fredrick Ogenga: So, I would want to combine two questions. One that was asked about journalism and going back to the tenets of journalism to address the climate change problematic. And also with that aspect of use of data and how sure are you that you are using the right data. So, my question, first of all, in this report, we asked ourselves in the report what is the relationship with This is really the measure, the threshold of information integrity about climate science. And we came up with a few issues that are familiar. You know, things like accuracy, you know, transparency, reliability of data. Transparency, accuracy, and reliability of data, and how consistent that data is. Because climate science data has also been inconsistent. If you say global warming is bringing about climate change, then tomorrow you are saying something else. You’re becoming inconsistent. And that’s the standard we see in climate misinformation. So for that, I think we also observed in the study that minimal studies have been done in the global south. In fact, we came about, out of 300 studies, we only uncovered one study from South Africa that touches on the metrics that we are measuring. So global south minimal data, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Very minimal data. Most of the data was coming from North America, Europe, China, and Russia. So that tells us something about also our interest in wanting to venture into research, to produce homegrown data that can inform us. And to that extent also comes the question of infrastructure. Because when you want to solve climate, when you want climate solutions out of data, then you also need to make that data secure. And therefore the question of infrastructure comes in where we lack data centers that are reliable. And if you have to have magnitude of data on data sets in climate science, then you need to host them elsewhere.

Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi: And so how sure are you? very briefly a few things. On the question on standards of journalism and ethics, etc., of course this is very important. I don’t know if you were here when I was speaking. It’s not about one thing or the other. It’s one thing and the other. So these standards, these self-regulatory elements are important and necessary, but they won’t solve parts of the problem that are crucial to address the issue. For example, the transparency of the social media companies or the AI companies, or demanding them to have human rights-based content moderation and content curation mechanism. So we just need to be careful to say that let’s invest in this thing and forget the other, because it’s not going to work. It’s a complex puzzle and unfortunately we need all the pieces of this puzzle. But on the standards, we also need to be careful that when we are talking about the standardized criteria for journalism of getting the other side, this is all fantastic. The best that can happen to climate discussion, it’s not activism journalism, it’s independent journalism. But independent journalism also means that you can’t compare reports of the IPCC that shows with 99% of reliability that we have a problem and put this as if it was equal to the other 1% of people saying that we don’t have an issue, right? I’m in favor that the journalists speak with… the others, but also underlining to the reader or to the listener that there is an unbalance here that is not the same, right? So this is super important. On what you, the question from the gentleman from South Africa, when you said this is perceived as a white man problem, this is precisely what we want with this initiative in stimulating more research and more investigative journalism from the Global South. Why this narrative is like that and where this is coming from, what is the impact? Because what you are saying here is something I didn’t knew. It shows that is different the problem in terms of information integrity in where you are, probably is different in Brazil, is different in Indonesia and so on. So this is super important in what we are trying to stimulate. And finally on the data story, we are launching under the Broadband Commission with UNDP and others, a global toolkit on data governance, precisely addressing these kind of issues. And then on your last question in terms of violence and others against the journalists, etc. Last year we dedicated the World Press Freedom Day entirely to this discussion, and then we can talk later, but we produced a roadmap talking with the journalists, the scientists, and how to address also these issues of attacks against those voices, those critical voices that are speaking about climate change or climate disinformation and other environmental issues. Thank you.

Camille Grenier: Thank you Guilherme. Maybe a quick remark from Harriet Kingaby Eugenio or could we go back, no?

Harriet Kingaby: I wanted to make the link back as well to, I think mainly around the first question, but I wanted to give an example of the unhealthy incentives that are linked to some of these issues. So I wanted to take the idea of quality of journalistic standards and how these are being impacted by the incentives we talked about. We did a piece of research about five years ago, and we looked at safe climate content online. So, you know, the most the most robust, entertaining, shared climate content online. And we found that actually something like 70 percent of that content couldn’t monetize through advertising. So that means that there’s no economic incentive for news organizations to produce that content. And it’s why it’s so important that we get advertisers around the table, because what they’re doing is they’re blocking climate content because they think it’s too political or too risky for their brand to appear next to. So what this does is it completely disincentivizes the really great quality journalism around one of the most important issues of our time. We need to get them around the table and reinforce the idea. And we’ve got people that can make the business case that actually their advertising performs well. We also need to reinforce the idea that it’s of the utmost importance that they actually go and advertise there because we need better standards. It’s also really important because then the third thing is that the platforms aren’t incentivizing this content because it’s not, you know, because it doesn’t keep necessarily keep people on the kind of platforms in the way that they want, because, you know, they’re after eyeballs and attention and addiction, right? So it’s really important that we then get the advertisers around the table with the platforms to go, actually, this is incredibly important for us.

Camille Grenier: It’s incredibly important for everyone in this room. And you need to do something about it. And we’ve seen that can create change. So Google introduced their first climate disinformation monetization policy because of that dynamic. So, yeah. Thank you so much. I’m not trying to answer all the questions. I would be happy to discuss some of the specific points that were raised, but talk to the African colleagues in the audience.

Fredrick Ogenga: I think we need more countries from the global south to join this effort because we have the global initiative on information integrity. and Climate Change. Some countries have joined. I remember Chile, Denmark, France, Morocco, Sweden, United Kingdom. Several others also expressed interest in joining, but we need more developing countries as well. And everything that we need is political commitment. We don’t ask anything else, but political commitment to join forces to address climate change and information integrity as a package, as something that we should see this both ways, and how we can move forward in this regard. Absolutely, thanks for raising the point. And to come back to the question, if you could make them short so that we can have some time to respond. Thank you so much. Sure. Good afternoon. My name is Mbadi. I’m from UNHCR,

Audience: based in Pretoria. And as you know, UNHCR, we deal a lot with refugees and asylum seekers. And these are oftentimes groups of people that have very limited, reliable information, especially with climate risks. So in a country like Botswana, for example, where we have the encampment policy, how then do you think we can practically ensure that these groups of people are exposed to reliable information? Because in an encampment space, that I think is a place where misinformation can spread widely. So what are some of the practical ways that we can counter that? Thank you. Thank you so much for the question. Hi, my name is Larry Maggett. I’m CEO of Connect Safely, which is a Silicon Valley-based NGO that educates parents and young people about various aspects of internet online safety. And we partner very closely with Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, and many of the technology companies that we work with. in and around Silicon Valley. I’m also a former journalist with CBS News, New York Times, LA Times, and BBC and still write a syndicated column and do a national radio show for CBS. And I, we work very closely with young people and the one thing that seems to be at least anecdotally evident is that young people are very concerned about climate change. I will probably pass on before the world is in serious decay, but the young people are going to have to live with it and potentially die with it, which is tragic. And I’m trying to figure out in our work, working on internet safety and working with our youth advisory council, how we can energize those young people and take advantage of their energy and their concern to channel some of their activities in ways that will actually have an impact on decision makers, policy makers, industry, and government. Thank you so much. Thank you. My name is Mikko Salo. I’m representing a Finnish NGO, Faktabar, who has been working on the fact-checking and mostly on the digital information literacy and especially in AI literacy. But very much on a follow-up of the previous person, one of the most promising thing that we did was we were fact-checking Greta Thunberg at the time. And as we know, she was more, I mean, she has had both of the issues very closely, and she was mostly right on everything, but of course became a huge campaigns, very polarizing and all that. But I was wondering what have you learned about the Greta Thunberg case, because she was really empowering the youngsters and perhaps the COVID killed the movement in the moment because people were really, young people were really doing something because now they are becoming vegetables with the technology, addicted to that one. But that was something. There is something very promising, but I wonder what could be done differently, because there is something right. Thank you. Thank you so much. One last question very quickly, please. Hi, this is Jasmine Ku from Hong Kong. So last year I was the national youth representative of ALCOI, the Regional Conference of Youth, endorsed by Yuan Yangguo on climate change. So one thing that I found, it’s a reflection for me in the conference, when we are drafting youth statements for the region, we have not considered and thought about information integrity as a problem on climate change when we are drafting the agenda and things. So for me, my reflection and also a question is, how could we possibly bring this topic into youth statements? Because the thing is, our region, the thing that they did not consider problematic enough is because there are a lot of corporate greenwashing and solutions provided. And the thing is, this kind of information has been overflowing, and then people believe that the problem has been tackled very well. That’s why it’s never on the agenda in a youth statement. So it’s just my question. Thank you very much.

Camille Grenier: Thank you so much for these brilliant questions on the place of young people in these debates, and on how to make sure that reliable information is accessible to all the different communities. There is very quickly one question online that is addressed directly to Professor Genga, and I will try to sum it up. But basically, it argues that if we have such a lack of data, how can we build actual policies? And probably in the global majority world, how can we make sure that with the lack of data, we can build factual and actual policies? We still have eight minutes and five speakers, so maybe we can do a quick round-up. And if you’d like to address, I really like the question related to the youth, access to reliable information and policy development. Who wants to go first?

Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi: I can start very quickly. Yeah, Guilherme. So, I mean, on the question of refugees and migration, etc., I think the colleagues, but you can add, I guess, Charlotte, in the UNHCR in Geneva, they are doing lots of interesting things on that. But there are interesting lessons learned from the past, using radio in refugee camps to debunk these and to stimulate information sharing, etc. But the essential issue here that I think is very important with this question is that we need to put a lot of focus on groups that are in a situation of vulnerability and marginalization, whoever they are. So, the issues of multilingualism, of the special protections that are needed, are super important in this conversation. Regarding the several questions on youth and Greta, for those who don’t know, I would strongly recommend for you to look into the Guardian project that’s called the 89% project, which basically is very solid research saying that 89% of the people in this planet do believe that we have a climate problem. The question is why they are not taking action. And some of our hypotheses are related to how the disinformation is shifting. It’s not any longer about saying there is not a problem. It’s much more sophisticated than that. But we do need to understand the characteristics of this disinformation to then sophisticate our own actions on that. And then it comes to the last point I wanted to comment, stealing a bit of the thunder. I would like to ask you a question regarding what the panel has produced on the data issue, the lack of evidence to produce evidence-based policy. So I do this call for action to you, apply to the global initiative, because this is precisely what we want to see. We want to see more data being produced, more information being produced, so that we can circulate more information to produce evidence-based policy. And of course, for the donors in the Rumo Online, contribute to the fund, because then we can fund more research and data production.

Camille Grenier: And I think we can thank Brazil for putting the first million in the fund, which is very, very crucial, specifically in the funding landscape that we all operate in.

Charlotte Scaddan: So we still have five minutes. Yeah, just because I want to speak to the excellent question about offline engagement. And I think just to build on what Guilherme was saying about vulnerable and marginalized groups, when we started out on the process of coming up with the global principles, we initially were just going to focus on the digital space, but quickly realized through the course of our global consultations that actually we needed to take a much broader approach because, of course, as we all know, there are many people who have inadequate connectivity or no connectivity at all, who aren’t in a position to engage digitally, who are still impacted by the disinformation and hate that’s spread online. But I think one of the things I touched on in my remarks was what we term community engagement. And this also is really valid, not just in terms of the UN’s work on refugees, but our work in peacekeeping environments and all over the world, that we have to be in communities listening to people. That has to happen face to face. And one thing that’s important for us all to remember is that we talk about news, we talk about major influences, we talk about digital. But most people are most influenced by the people they know. They’re influenced by their pastor or priest, by their teacher, by their local community leader, by their uncle, by their cousin. And that is how we can effectively reach people, by identifying those local community voices who are trusted, local community leaders, and sharing reliable information with them so that they can then amplify in a way that’s going to be engaging. So I would say that’s a really important point about offline. And then just on youth, I would say, and I’m not a youth anymore, sadly, but we need to engage with youth in a meaningful way by actually listening to them on an equal footing. Bring them to the table. Not being an add-on to a process, but having them integrated from the start. Because there’s a lot we can learn from them, they’re digital natives and we’re not.

Camille Grenier: Thank you. Absolutely. So we’ve come to the last point. Eugênio.

Fredrick Ogenga: Real quick, my final remarks. I fully agree with the need to engage young people. And we have this call to action that we expect individuals, organizations to submit concrete proposals on information integrity and climate change. I think we need to build momentum because COP30 is going to be the culmination of these global efforts. And we’re also planning to have high-level side events in Belém to showcase these initiatives. And of course, this is an open invitation to you all, the audience here, also people online to stay tuned because this call to action will be released soon. And we are glad to see that many stakeholders have already expressed interest in sending

Camille Grenier: proposals and will be, of course, available for any follow-up as needed. Thank you so much for opening the doors of COP30 also to this community working on information integrity. It’s really, really important. I just wanted, I felt like if I go without responding to that question from, I think it’s an online audience, yeah, who asked about where there’s lack of data, the global south, then what do we do?

Fredrick Ogenga: Yeah. Well, this I think it’s an online audience, yeah, who asked about where there’s lack of data, the global south, then what do we do? Yeah. This is a challenge that emerges from a trajectory of orality because Africans are oral by nature, but it doesn’t mean that they are not climate experts. And for example, the Ogiek community in Kenya, a community that is known for preserving forests. So the capitalistic way of looking at climate interventions really disregards their local wisdom on how to address the climate challenge using carbon credit programs that are more from global multinationals as opposed to grassroot approaches. So my suggestion would be, what are the grassroot approaches that we can find, you know, through primary research? So as opposed to what we did, because we did a systematic review, that is not going to the field and engaging with the local, the locality, so that you can dive into the local knowledge repository to get data that then can inform a practical, more meaningful practical interventions. And therefore, after you do that, you simply monitor and evaluate, iterate, and develop literature about it so that it can guide your interventions going forward. Luckily, that is what is lacking. So my suggestion would be that we need to look into ways in which we can partner with those who are capable of making us be in a position where we can co-create together and then be able to use locally available resources and infrastructures to come up with data that can bring, for example, greening, you know, just planting trees, it’s not rocket science. But how many are we that are doing tree planting or maybe fruit tree planting at the grassroot level? We take it for granted. So it’s at that level. It’s time we stop taking those things for granted, we document them and we see how those things can help us in finding our own knowledge and data about where we want to move forward with the problem of climate change.

Camille Grenier: Thank you so much. Harriet, one last?

Harriet Kingaby: I will be very quick and I’ll answer the point about young people. So I talk about these issues quite a lot and the last time I talked about these issues I was on stage after a young woman called Adele Zeynep Walton who has just written a book. And she wrote this book because her younger sister unfortunately took her own life after being served content online through exactly the kind of patterns that I’ve described that encouraged her to do so. And there is a crisis in the mental health of young people and that is exacerbated by what is happening to them online. And I got very cross yesterday after a panel, I won’t lie, because someone said we need to wait for regulation around this and we absolutely do, we need regulation of this space. But people are getting hurt in the interim and we need to do everything we can to move very quickly to solve these problems. And that includes helping our young people to feel hopeful about the future, releasing them from the systems that are addicting them and pulling them online and helping them to despair. So I’ll just leave you with that, we solve everything we talked about today and we will also go some way to looking at the mental health crisis in young people today. Thank you so much for these last remarks. There is a word that comes and Eugenio mentioned, mutirao, I hope I’m pronouncing it alright.

Camille Grenier: And really I would like to take this word because information integrity, as you may have understood today, is a big house and everybody is welcome to bring their own contribution to build that. and make sure that we have access to reliable information, that we protect our youth, that we protect access to facts, journalists, activists from around the world. And really, I think that with this global initiative, with the fund, with the call to action, we have a very precious thing that will take forward and that will bring to COP and hopefully beyond COP 30. That will be, of course, crucial. Thank you so much for being with us today. And of course, remain available. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement points

Multi-stakeholder approach is essential for addressing climate information integrity

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi
– Harriet Kingaby

Arguments

Solutions must address structural obstacles including platform transparency, advertising accountability, and protection of information sources

The problem requires both qualifying the supply of information and empowering citizens to navigate the information ecosystem

Advertisers can be part of the solution by demanding transparency and investing in pluralistic media coverage of climate issues

Summary

All speakers agree that addressing climate disinformation requires coordinated action across multiple stakeholder groups including governments, platforms, advertisers, civil society, and communities rather than siloed approaches

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Economic | Human rights

Current research and data on climate disinformation is insufficient, particularly in the Global South

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi
– Fredrick Ogenga

Arguments

More investigative journalism and research funding is needed to understand the sources, channels, and impacts of climate disinformation

Current research on climate disinformation is concentrated in a handful of countries, with minimal data from the Global South

Summary

Both speakers emphasize the critical need for more comprehensive research and evidence collection, especially in underrepresented regions, to understand and combat climate disinformation effectively

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Environmental journalists and information sources face increasing threats and need protection

Speakers

– Camille Grenier
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi
– Audience

Arguments

Environmental journalists face increasing threats, harassment, and physical attacks for investigating climate and environmental issues

Vulnerable and marginalized groups, including refugees, need special attention and multilingual approaches to access reliable climate information

Scientists and environmental defenders are being targeted both physically and through surveillance of their data and communications

Summary

There is strong consensus that those producing and disseminating reliable climate information face escalating dangers and require systematic protection measures

Topics

Human rights | Cybersecurity

Youth engagement must be meaningful and treat young people as equal partners

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Harriet Kingaby

Arguments

Young people are deeply concerned about climate change but need meaningful engagement as equal partners rather than add-ons to processes

Mental health impacts on young people are exacerbated by online systems that promote despair rather than hope about climate action

Summary

Both speakers agree that youth must be genuinely included as equal stakeholders in climate information integrity efforts, not merely consulted as an afterthought

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Similar viewpoints

All three speakers represent the core partnership behind the Global Initiative and share a commitment to institutionalizing information integrity through international frameworks and concrete funding mechanisms

Speakers

– Eugênio Garcia
– Charlotte Scaddan
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Brazil launched the Global Initiative during G20 presidency, making information integrity a priority for the first time in G20 history

The UN’s Global Principles for Information Integrity provide a framework for action across five principles including societal trust, healthy incentives, and transparency

UNESCO’s approach recognizes information as a public good requiring support for both supply and demand sides of the information ecosystem

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers recognize that climate disinformation has evolved from outright denial to more sophisticated tactics aimed at undermining trust in institutions and delaying action

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Fredrick Ogenga

Arguments

Climate disinformation creates distrust in institutions responsible for climate action and undermines public trust in climate science

Strategic skepticism is replacing climate denialism to delay climate response and derail climate interventions

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasize the importance of community-level engagement and the need to reach vulnerable populations through trusted local channels rather than top-down approaches

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Community-based approaches are essential, as people are most influenced by trusted local voices like pastors, teachers, and community leaders

Vulnerable and marginalized groups, including refugees, need special attention and multilingual approaches to access reliable climate information

Topics

Sociocultural | Development

Unexpected consensus

Advertising industry as both problem and solution

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Harriet Kingaby

Arguments

Solutions must address structural obstacles including platform transparency, advertising accountability, and protection of information sources

The attention economy funded by advertising creates unhealthy incentives that prioritize divisive content over quality information

Explanation

It’s unexpected that there’s consensus on engaging the advertising industry as a key stakeholder in solving information integrity issues, given that advertising is also identified as part of the problem. This represents a pragmatic approach to working with economic actors who have power to drive change

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory

Integration of local and indigenous knowledge systems

Speakers

– Fredrick Ogenga
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Local and indigenous knowledge systems need to be documented and integrated into climate information integrity efforts

UNESCO’s approach recognizes information as a public good requiring support for both supply and demand sides of the information ecosystem

Explanation

The consensus on valuing traditional knowledge systems alongside formal research approaches is unexpected in a discussion focused on digital information integrity, showing recognition that solutions must be culturally grounded and inclusive

Topics

Sociocultural | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

There is strong consensus among speakers on the need for multi-stakeholder approaches, protection of information sources, meaningful youth engagement, and addressing research gaps particularly in the Global South. The speakers also agree on the evolution of climate disinformation tactics and the importance of community-based solutions.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with complementary rather than conflicting perspectives. The speakers represent different sectors but share aligned goals and approaches, suggesting strong potential for collaborative action. The consensus extends beyond problem identification to specific solutions and implementation strategies, indicating readiness for coordinated global action on climate information integrity.

Different viewpoints

Scope of responsibility for addressing climate disinformation

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi
– Audience

Arguments

UNESCO’s approach recognizes information as a public good requiring support for both supply and demand sides of the information ecosystem

Scientists and environmental defenders are being targeted both physically and through surveillance of their data and communications

Summary

While Guilherme emphasizes a balanced approach between citizen education and systemic support, audience members focused more heavily on protecting vulnerable groups and activists, suggesting different priorities in resource allocation and intervention strategies.

Topics

Human rights | Development

Unexpected differences

Approach to journalistic standards in climate reporting

Speakers

– Audience
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Youth movements like those inspired by Greta Thunberg show promise but need sustained support and integration into policy processes

UNESCO’s approach recognizes information as a public good requiring support for both supply and demand sides of the information ecosystem

Explanation

An audience member suggested returning to traditional journalism norms of presenting ‘both sides’ equally, while Guilherme cautioned against false balance, arguing that 99% scientific consensus shouldn’t be presented as equal to 1% dissent. This represents a fundamental disagreement about journalistic objectivity versus accuracy in climate reporting.

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed remarkable consensus on the fundamental problems and need for multi-stakeholder solutions, with disagreements mainly centered on emphasis and approach rather than core objectives. The main areas of difference involved the balance between individual versus systemic interventions, the role of different stakeholders, and approaches to research and evidence-gathering.

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level. The speakers largely agreed on problem identification and general solution directions, but differed on priorities, implementation strategies, and stakeholder emphasis. This suggests a mature field where practitioners agree on fundamentals but are still working out optimal approaches, which is actually positive for collaborative action and policy development.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

All three speakers represent the core partnership behind the Global Initiative and share a commitment to institutionalizing information integrity through international frameworks and concrete funding mechanisms

Speakers

– Eugênio Garcia
– Charlotte Scaddan
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Brazil launched the Global Initiative during G20 presidency, making information integrity a priority for the first time in G20 history

The UN’s Global Principles for Information Integrity provide a framework for action across five principles including societal trust, healthy incentives, and transparency

UNESCO’s approach recognizes information as a public good requiring support for both supply and demand sides of the information ecosystem

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers recognize that climate disinformation has evolved from outright denial to more sophisticated tactics aimed at undermining trust in institutions and delaying action

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Fredrick Ogenga

Arguments

Climate disinformation creates distrust in institutions responsible for climate action and undermines public trust in climate science

Strategic skepticism is replacing climate denialism to delay climate response and derail climate interventions

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasize the importance of community-level engagement and the need to reach vulnerable populations through trusted local channels rather than top-down approaches

Speakers

– Charlotte Scaddan
– Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Arguments

Community-based approaches are essential, as people are most influenced by trusted local voices like pastors, teachers, and community leaders

Vulnerable and marginalized groups, including refugees, need special attention and multilingual approaches to access reliable climate information

Topics

Sociocultural | Development

Key takeaways

Climate disinformation is fundamentally a democratic issue that undermines trust in institutions and delays climate action through strategic skepticism rather than outright denialism

Information integrity requires a multi-stakeholder ecosystem approach rather than focusing on individual actors, involving supply side (journalists, scientists), demand side (citizens), and distribution channels (platforms, advertisers)

The Global Initiative on Information Integrity and Climate Change represents unprecedented international cooperation, with Brazil pledging $1 million and making it a G20 priority for the first time

The advertising industry inadvertently funds climate disinformation through opaque supply chains but can be part of the solution by demanding transparency and supporting quality climate journalism

Research gaps are severe, particularly in the Global South, hampering evidence-based policy development and requiring urgent investment in local research and investigative journalism

Environmental journalists and climate defenders face increasing physical and digital threats, requiring international protection mechanisms

Youth engagement must be meaningful and equal rather than tokenistic, as young people are most affected by climate change and online mental health impacts

Community-based approaches are essential since people trust local voices more than mainstream media or institutions

Resolutions and action items

Launch a Call to Action for COP30 that will be open to all stakeholders to submit concrete proposals on information integrity and climate change

UNESCO’s Global Fund will provide funding for research and investigative journalism, with an open call closing July 6th

Plan high-level side events at COP30 in Belém to showcase information integrity initiatives

Develop a global toolkit on data governance under the Broadband Commission with UNDP

Engage advertisers at industry events like Cannes to promote information integrity principles

Expand research efforts particularly in the Global South to fill critical evidence gaps

Implement community-based approaches using trusted local voices for climate information dissemination

Unresolved issues

How to balance communicating climate urgency without inciting fear while motivating action, particularly in contexts where climate change is seen as ‘a white man’s problem’

Lack of transparency in digital platforms and AI systems that continue to spread climate disinformation

Protection mechanisms for environmental defenders’ data security, particularly regarding carbon credit projects and indigenous territories

How to effectively reach vulnerable populations like refugees in camps with reliable climate information

Integration of information integrity concerns into youth climate statements and movements

Economic sustainability of quality climate journalism when platforms demonetize climate content

How to incorporate local and indigenous knowledge systems into formal climate information frameworks

Addressing the mental health crisis among young people exacerbated by online climate despair

Suggested compromises

Applying traditional journalism standards (fact-checking, multiple sources) to climate activism while recognizing the scientific consensus is not equivalent to fringe denial views

Balancing the need for urgent climate communication with avoiding fear-based messaging by always pairing problems with specific, actionable solutions

Combining top-down policy approaches with grassroots community engagement to address different information needs and trust levels

Working with rather than against the advertising industry by demonstrating business cases for supporting quality climate information

Integrating both digital and offline approaches to reach all populations regardless of connectivity levels

So we lose what the bad actors already knew at that time, the ecosystem logic of this. So the initiative, that one that I did 20 years ago, was very successful in its goals… But when we were talking with them, or even with the scientists, the logic is the scientists want to know how to give better interviews for the journalists. The scientists were not even thinking that there was an important field of research on the issue of information integrity… And this was a huge mistake of our part because we were not prepared enough to think the rest of the ecosystem.

Speaker

Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi

Reason

This comment is deeply insightful because it reveals a fundamental strategic error in past approaches to climate communication – focusing on individual actors rather than understanding the systemic nature of information ecosystems. It demonstrates how well-intentioned efforts can fail when they don’t account for the coordinated, ecosystem-wide approach that disinformation actors use.

Impact

This comment fundamentally reframed the discussion from viewing information integrity as a series of individual problems to understanding it as a complex ecosystem challenge. It established the theoretical foundation for why multi-stakeholder approaches are necessary and influenced subsequent speakers to emphasize systemic solutions rather than isolated interventions.

Most of this you know, I think there’s been plenty of cleverer people than me talking about that at this conference but the twist that I want you to take away is that this situation does not work for advertisers either and that actually creates opportunities for us to create powerful alliances that can really, really take on some of this system.

Speaker

Harriet Kingaby

Reason

This comment is thought-provoking because it completely reframes advertisers from being part of the problem to potential allies in the solution. It challenges the typical adversarial framing and introduces a strategic insight about aligned interests that opens new pathways for action.

Impact

This comment shifted the conversation from a defensive posture against harmful actors to a more strategic approach of building coalitions with unexpected allies. It introduced the concept that economic incentives can be realigned to support information integrity, which became a recurring theme in subsequent discussions about sustainable solutions.

So people are strategically frustrating or obscuring climate science in order to delay the climate response, to cut into the chains of those in the policy line of coming up with measures that are supposed to address climate change and effectively derailing climate interventions… strategic scepticism is actually replacing climate denialism.

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga

Reason

This observation is crucial because it identifies the evolution of climate disinformation tactics from outright denial to more sophisticated delay strategies. This insight reveals why traditional counter-narratives focused on proving climate change exists are no longer sufficient.

Impact

This comment elevated the discussion’s analytical sophistication by showing how disinformation tactics have evolved. It helped other panelists and the audience understand why current approaches may be inadequate and influenced the conversation toward more nuanced response strategies that address delay tactics rather than just denial.

In countries like the US and North America, we found out that the mainstream media is still led in terms of spreading false information about climate… What many institutions have long thought, and I include the UN in that, have long thought as mainstream media is no longer mainstream. The mainstream has shifted, and that’s true across many geographies.

Speaker

Charlotte Scaddan

Reason

This comment is profoundly insightful because it challenges fundamental assumptions about media landscapes and information distribution. It forces a reconsideration of communication strategies based on outdated models of how information flows.

Impact

This observation prompted a significant shift in how participants discussed outreach and communication strategies. It moved the conversation away from traditional media-focused approaches toward community-level engagement and influenced discussions about reaching people through trusted local voices rather than institutional channels.

In the region where I come from, climate change is viewed as a white man’s problem. It is viewed as a matter of whether it is cold or it is hot. But in actual fact, what we see is that it means loss of life, loss of property, loss of assets, and displacement… what are the ethics in information sharing and information dissemination when it comes to climate change?

Speaker

Lee Cobb-Ottoman (audience member)

Reason

This comment is exceptionally thought-provoking because it exposes how climate change communication can be perceived as culturally biased and disconnected from lived realities. It raises profound ethical questions about how to communicate urgency without perpetuating colonial or paternalistic narratives.

Impact

This intervention fundamentally challenged the panel’s framing and forced a deeper examination of cultural and ethical dimensions of climate communication. It led to more nuanced discussions about local knowledge systems, community-based approaches, and the need for research and solutions that emerge from the Global South rather than being imposed from outside.

We are in effect guinea pigs in an information experiment in which the resilience of our societies is being put to the test… People just don’t know what’s real, what to believe.

Speaker

Charlotte Scaddan

Reason

This metaphor is striking because it captures the unprecedented nature of our current information environment and the societal-scale risks we face. It frames the current moment as an uncontrolled experiment with democracy and social cohesion at stake.

Impact

This vivid characterization heightened the urgency of the discussion and helped frame information integrity as a fundamental threat to social stability. It influenced subsequent speakers to emphasize the democratic and societal implications of their work, moving beyond technical solutions to consider broader social resilience.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally transformed the discussion from a relatively straightforward presentation of initiatives into a sophisticated analysis of systemic challenges and strategic opportunities. Guilherme’s ecosystem insight established the theoretical foundation for understanding information integrity as a complex system rather than isolated problems. Harriet’s reframing of advertisers as potential allies introduced strategic thinking about coalition-building and economic incentives. The research findings about evolved disinformation tactics and shifted media landscapes challenged assumptions about effective response strategies. Most importantly, the intervention from the Global South participant forced the entire panel to confront issues of cultural bias and ethical responsibility in climate communication. Together, these comments elevated the discussion from operational details to strategic and ethical considerations, creating a more nuanced understanding of both the challenges and opportunities in addressing climate disinformation. The conversation evolved from presenting solutions to questioning fundamental assumptions about how information systems work and how change can be achieved.

How can we better understand the impact of social media on audiences regarding climate disinformation in measurable ways?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga

Explanation

There is a significant gap in understanding how social media platforms specifically impact audiences with climate disinformation, which is crucial for developing effective countermeasures

What are the governance mechanisms and transparency requirements needed for digital platforms, especially regarding climate disinformation?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga and Charlotte Scaddan

Explanation

The lack of transparency in digital platforms about ownership, data sources, and content moderation makes it difficult to address climate disinformation systematically

How can we expand research on climate disinformation in the Global South, Latin America, and Southeast Asia?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga

Explanation

Out of 300 studies reviewed, only one was from South Africa, indicating a massive research gap in understanding climate disinformation in these regions

What are the legal frameworks and litigation possibilities for addressing greenwashing and climate disinformation?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga

Explanation

This is described as a ‘grey area’ and ‘contentious area’ where data is still minimal, requiring further legal and policy research

How can we develop secure data infrastructure for climate science data in regions lacking reliable data centers?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga and Agenunga Robert

Explanation

The need for secure hosting of climate data sets is crucial, especially when data must be stored elsewhere due to lack of local infrastructure

What protocols are needed to protect data collected for carbon credit projects from indigenous territories?

Speaker

Agenunga Robert

Explanation

There are concerns about data security and potential harm to indigenous communities if carbon credit data is compromised or misused

How can we ensure that only 4% of carbon credit benefits go to forest-dependent communities while protecting their data rights?

Speaker

Agenunga Robert

Explanation

Questions about fair distribution of benefits from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility and data governance for indigenous communities

What self-regulatory standards should climate activists and civil society adopt to maintain information integrity?

Speaker

Pavel Antonov

Explanation

Concerns about whether climate defenders should adopt traditional journalism standards to avoid contributing to the fractured information environment

What are the ethical boundaries for communicating climate urgency without inciting fear, particularly in regions where climate change is viewed as a distant problem?

Speaker

Lee Cobb-Ottoman

Explanation

Balancing the need to communicate climate risks effectively while avoiding fear-mongering, especially in contexts where climate change is not seen as locally relevant

How can reliable climate information be effectively delivered to refugee populations in encampment settings?

Speaker

Mbadi (UNHCR representative)

Explanation

Refugees and asylum seekers have limited access to reliable information and are vulnerable to misinformation in enclosed settings

How can we better engage and channel young people’s climate concerns into effective action that influences decision-makers?

Speaker

Larry Maggett

Explanation

Young people are highly concerned about climate change but need better mechanisms to translate their energy into policy impact

What lessons can be learned from the Greta Thunberg movement and how can similar youth mobilization be sustained?

Speaker

Mikko Salo

Explanation

Understanding what made the Thunberg movement effective and how to prevent similar movements from losing momentum

How can information integrity be integrated into youth climate statements and agendas at regional conferences?

Speaker

Jasmine Ku

Explanation

Youth representatives are not considering information integrity as a climate problem, partly due to overwhelming corporate greenwashing that makes the problem seem solved

How can evidence-based climate policies be developed in regions with insufficient data on climate disinformation?

Speaker

Online audience member

Explanation

The challenge of creating effective policies when there is a lack of research and data, particularly in the Global South

How can grassroots approaches and local knowledge be better documented and integrated into climate intervention strategies?

Speaker

Fredrick Ogenga

Explanation

Need to move beyond systematic reviews to primary research that captures local wisdom and oral traditions in climate solutions

What is the relationship between the attention economy, mental health crises in young people, and climate disinformation?

Speaker

Harriet Kingaby

Explanation

Understanding how the same systems that spread climate disinformation also contribute to mental health problems among youth

Summary

This panel discussion explored new data governance mechanisms for language data driving natural language processing (NLP) ecosystems in Africa, focusing on licensing frameworks that protect cultural sovereignty while enabling innovation. The session was moderated by Mark Irura from Mozilla Foundation and featured six experts from across Africa discussing the challenges of current open licensing models like CC0 that may inadvertently enable extractive practices with African language data.

Dr. Lilian Wanzare emphasized the need for community-centered approaches to data collection and licensing that balance open sharing with benefit sharing, noting that language embodies cultural identity and community aspirations. Dr. Melissa Omino highlighted the distinction between language communities (who preserve languages) and data communities (who create datasets), advocating for community ownership rather than just consent, and introduced the new Litiyabodo Open Data License as an alternative framework. She stressed that communities should define what benefits they want, which often involves sustainable, community-based returns rather than monetary compensation.

Deshni Govender pointed out that extractive practices occur within countries as well as across borders, suggesting policy protections should build on existing cultural and indigenous rights frameworks. She referenced the Nagoya Protocol from biodiversity as a potential model for linguistic resource sharing. Viola Ochola emphasized the need for robust legal frameworks, meaningful community engagement, and capacity building within African nations to support homegrown AI development.

Samuel Rutunda discussed how government AI strategies can raise awareness, create working frameworks, and foster collaborations, while Eli Sabblah shared Ghana’s experience in developing national AI strategy through inclusive stakeholder consultations. The panelists agreed that effective governance requires collaborative partnerships between communities, governments, funders, and developers, moving beyond extractive models toward equitable benefit-sharing arrangements that respect cultural protocols while advancing technological innovation.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Data Governance and Community Sovereignty**: The need to shift from treating African language communities as mere data sources to recognizing them as collective data stewards with inherent rights to govern their cultural and linguistic data, moving beyond individual consent to community-centered governance models.

– **Licensing and Benefit-Sharing Mechanisms**: Discussion of new licensing frameworks like the Litiyabodo Open Data License that move beyond traditional open licenses (like CC0) to ensure equitable benefit-sharing with language communities, where benefits are defined by communities themselves rather than imposed externally.

– **Anti-Extractive Practices and Cultural Protection**: Addressing how current AI development practices often extract value from African language communities without providing benefits, and the need for policies that protect cultural sovereignty while still enabling innovation and open collaboration.

– **Government Role and Policy Frameworks**: Exploration of how national AI strategies and procurement systems can support community-led governance, including the challenges of government understanding and funding AI/NLP projects, and the need for capacity building within government institutions.

– **Community Capacity Building and Skills Development**: The necessity of building technical literacy, digital rights awareness, and governance frameworks within language communities so they can effectively participate in and control the development of AI technologies using their languages.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore practical solutions for creating more equitable data governance mechanisms for African language data used in Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems. The panel sought to address the power imbalances and extractive practices in current AI development while finding ways to protect cultural sovereignty without stifling innovation.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and solution-oriented tone throughout, with participants building on each other’s ideas constructively. While there was acknowledgment of serious challenges around exploitation and power imbalances, the tone remained optimistic and focused on practical pathways forward. The conversation was academic yet accessible, with participants sharing both theoretical frameworks and real-world experiences from their work across different African countries.

Speakers

– **Mark Irura** – Moderator, works with Mozilla Foundation

– **Deshni Govender** – Dynamic force from South Africa working at the intersection of law, technology, and social impact; passionate about democratizing AI ecosystems; advisory board member of the South African AI Association; co-founder of the GIZ diverse women in tech network; working group member on AI strategy recommendations for South Africa; featured on the list of 100 brilliant women in AI ethics

– **Rutunda Samuel** – CTO and principal researcher at Digital Umuganda, a leading AI driven voice technology organization for African languages based in Kigali

– **Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare** – Dr., lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at Maseno University; research interests in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing for low resource languages; holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics and an MSc in Language Science and Technology from Saarland University in Germany

– **Melissa Omino** – Dr., Director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology (CIPIT) at Strathmore University; intellectual property expert; board member at Creative Commons

– **Elikplim Sabblah** – Technical advisor working for the Fair Forward program, a project within the Digital Transformation Center (DTC) Ghana within GIZ (German technical cooperation); focuses on AI policy advisory, open AI resource accessibility and capacity building

– **Ochola Viola** – Director of Access to Information; advocate of the High Court of Kenya; legal practitioner with experience in administrative law, commercial law, human rights and law reforms; holds an MBA in strategic management; Open Government Leadership Fellow

Additional speakers:

None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.

# Data Governance Mechanisms for African Language Technologies: A Panel Discussion Report

## Introduction and Context

This panel discussion, moderated by Mark Irura from Mozilla Foundation, brought together six distinguished experts from across Africa to explore new data governance mechanisms for language data driving natural language processing (NLP) ecosystems on the continent. Irura opened by providing context about Mozilla Common Voice, which has collected over 30,000 hours of voice data in more than 180 languages, highlighting both the scale of community contribution and the need for better governance frameworks.

The panel featured Dr Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare, a computational linguistics expert from Maseno University; Dr Melissa Omino, Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology at Strathmore University; Deshni Govender, a South African legal and technology expert working on AI democratisation; Rutunda Samuel, CTO of Digital Umuganda focusing on African language voice technology; Elikplim Sabblah, a technical advisor with Ghana’s Digital Transformation Centre; and Ochola Viola, Director of Access to Information and legal practitioner specialising in administrative and human rights law.

The session focused particularly on developing licensing frameworks that protect cultural sovereignty whilst enabling innovation, addressing the critical challenge of how current open licensing models like Creative Commons Zero (CC0) may inadvertently enable extractive practices with African language data.

## Core Challenges in Current Data Governance Models

### The Inadequacy of Traditional Licensing Frameworks

The discussion began with a fundamental critique of existing open licensing models. Dr Melissa Omino articulated a crucial distinction that shaped the conversation: “Ownership and consent are two completely different things. The traditional data sharing regime treats communities as sources rather than partners, and this extracts value whilst leaving these very communities with just the risks and harms.”

This observation highlighted how current frameworks, including widely-used Creative Commons licences like CC0, fail to address the power imbalances inherent in AI development. Dr Lilian Wanzare emphasised the need for “community centeredness” in approaches to data collection and licensing, noting that language embodies cultural identity and community aspirations.

### Extractive Practices: Beyond Simple North-South Dynamics

Deshni Govender introduced a particularly thought-provoking perspective that challenged conventional narratives about data exploitation: “I think it’s important also to point out that when we mention the concept of extractive practices, that it’s not always a foreign versus local context. And it’s not a cross-border issue, because I think that extractive practices often happen within countries and within the continent under the guise of the open collaboration concept.”

This insight reframed the discussion from simplistic North-South dynamics to a more nuanced understanding of power structures that can perpetuate extraction even within African contexts. Govender suggested that policy protections should build upon existing cultural and indigenous rights frameworks, referencing the Nagoya Protocol from biodiversity as a potential model for linguistic resource sharing.

### The Complexity of Oral Traditions

A critical technical challenge emerged through Govender’s analysis of African oral traditions: “The problem with having culture or language that is intended for oral knowledge, it means that it’s also shaped by tone, it’s shaped by cadence, it’s shaped by who is telling the story and what is that meaning that’s attached to it… And so it’s kind of hard to understand the asset that you’re working with if you’re not even sure how to put it into create an asset value or an asset form.”

This observation highlighted the fundamental difficulty of digitising oral knowledge systems without losing their cultural essence, presenting unique challenges for NLP development that go beyond simple text-based approaches.

## Community Ownership and Alternative Frameworks

### Moving Beyond Consent to Ownership

The panellists demonstrated broad agreement on the need to shift from treating African language communities as mere data sources to recognising them as collective data stewards with inherent rights. Dr Omino distinguished between language communities (who preserve languages) and data communities (who create datasets), advocating for community ownership rather than just consent.

Ochola Viola emphasised that “community ownership should be legally entrenched with operationalised mechanisms to reach remote communities,” highlighting the need for robust legal frameworks with stringent data collection rules to protect communities from exploitation. She stressed that local communities should control data from collection through usage with meaningful engagement throughout the process.

### New Licensing Approaches

Dr Omino introduced the Litiyabodo Open Data Licence as an alternative framework, though specific details about its mechanisms were not elaborated in the discussion. She also mentioned that Creative Commons has released preference signaling work that complements existing CC licenses, suggesting ongoing evolution in licensing approaches.

Govender referenced other emerging frameworks, mentioning both the “Noodle license” and “Inkuba license” as examples of alternative approaches being developed, though again without detailed explanation of their specific features.

## Government Role and Policy Challenges

### Potential and Limitations of Government Involvement

The discussion revealed both the potential and limitations of government involvement in language data governance. Rutunda Samuel explained how government AI strategies can raise awareness, create working frameworks, add accountability, and help raise resources for language technology development. He shared Rwanda’s experience with Common Voice, which collected 30,000 hours over six years across more than 10 African languages.

However, Samuel also highlighted practical challenges: “Usually, I don’t know, I was talking to someone and say, government is run by accountants. And accountants, they want facts. They want, oh, what is this going to do? And then it’s still in the early stage of the language technology… So it’s very hard to show the facts.”

### National Strategy Development

Elikplim Sabblah shared Ghana’s experience in developing national AI strategy through inclusive stakeholder consultations, noting that Ghana’s draft strategy includes guidelines for data collectors on collection, storage, and sharing practices. He also mentioned the launch of an AI policy playbook at a UNESCO conference, indicating broader continental efforts at policy development.

However, Ochola Viola pointed out critical implementation gaps, particularly in procurement processes where “the procurement person does not, is not aware of AI, let alone even, you know, any other thing.”

## Capacity Building and Skills Development

A critical theme throughout the discussion was the need for comprehensive capacity building across multiple levels. Dr Wanzare emphasised that communities need understanding of AI model development, governance frameworks, and benefit structures to participate effectively in governance decisions.

Sabblah highlighted the importance of outreach programmes to help communities understand AI’s purpose and overcome fatigue from repeated data collection schemes. He also mentioned research on women-led SMEs that are using AI tools without realising it, pointing to the need for broader digital literacy.

Govender noted her inclusion in the “100 brilliant women in AI ethics” list, highlighting the importance of diverse voices in AI governance discussions.

## Economic Considerations and Investment

The discussion touched on funding and investment strategies for African language technology development. Dr Omino advocated for greater local investment, arguing that “governments need to invest locally in NLP rather than looking externally, and challenge local investors to fund model development.”

Samuel, while agreeing on the need for government support, focused more on changing procurement mindsets and willingness to take risks with emerging technologies. The challenge of demonstrating concrete benefits from early-stage language technology investments emerged as a significant barrier to securing both government and private sector support.

## Technical and Infrastructure Challenges

Beyond governance and legal frameworks, the discussion acknowledged significant technical challenges specific to African language contexts. The predominantly oral nature of many African languages creates unique NLP design challenges that require specialised approaches to preserve cultural nuances and communal knowledge systems.

Infrastructure limitations also pose significant barriers to community participation in governance mechanisms. Viola emphasised that digital infrastructure must be available so remote communities can access benefits and engage with AI technology investors.

## Areas of Agreement and Ongoing Tensions

### Shared Principles

The panellists showed broad agreement on several key principles:

– Communities should have ownership and control over their language data rather than just providing consent

– Current licensing and governance frameworks are inadequate and need reform

– Capacity building is essential for effective community participation in AI governance

– Government procurement systems need updating to handle AI technologies appropriately

### Different Emphases

While not representing fundamental disagreements, speakers emphasised different aspects of the challenges:

– Dr Wanzare focused on community knowledge gaps as a primary barrier

– Viola emphasised government institutional capacity and legal framework inadequacies

– Omino stressed the need for complete shifts away from external funding dependency

– Samuel highlighted the practical challenges of demonstrating early-stage technology benefits

## Conclusion

This discussion revealed both the complexity of challenges facing African language data governance and the emerging consensus among experts on fundamental principles. While significant questions remain about implementation strategies and funding approaches, the shared commitment to community sovereignty and equitable benefit-sharing provides a foundation for future development.

The conversation demonstrated that protecting African language data and communities requires not just new licensing frameworks, but fundamental changes in how AI development is conceptualised, funded, and implemented. The panellists’ references to ongoing work on new licensing models and national AI strategies suggest that practical progress is being made alongside theoretical development.

The path forward demands continued dialogue, experimentation with new models, and commitment to centering community voices and values in all aspects of language technology development. As Irura noted in moderating the discussion, these conversations are part of an ongoing effort to ensure that the benefits of AI development reach the communities whose languages and knowledge make such technologies possible.

Mark Irura: Good evening. Good morning. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining our session. My name is Mark Irura. I’ll be moderating this session. I think we will start with introductions. I’ll introduce the panel. We have three participants who are online and three who are here on stage. I will start with Deshni Govenderni on my right. Deshni Govenderni is a dynamic force healing from South Africa. Her work intersects law, technology, and social impact. She’s passionate about democratizing AI ecosystems. Her skill sets range from prototyping new open source licenses with local language communities to scaling AI and data science through a boot camp that has been conducted for women that has been conducted across three African countries. She has also co-developed South Africa’s first AI maturity assessment framework. She has passionately worked on birthing the language AI hub for African NLP and co-created an AI policy playbook with Global South policymakers. Deshni Govenderni describes herself as a bridge builder and a co-creator of AI in Africa. She’s an advisory board member of the South African AI Association, a co-founder of the GIZ diverse women in tech network, working group member on AI strategy recommendations for South Africa, and was featured on the list of 100 brilliant women in AI ethics. Later we’ll introduce Samuel Rutunda, who is on my left. Samuel is a CTO and principal researcher at Digital Umuganda, a leading AI driven voice technology organization for African languages. Digital Umuganda is a Kigali based AI and open data organization on a mission to democratize access to information in African languages. Founded in 2018, the company builds large scale voice and text data sets and develops voice AI tools to bridge the language divide and preserve linguistic diversity. With projects spanning 17 African languages, they’ve recorded thousands of hours of speech and digitized countless text samples, fueling models for local and global impact. Founded in Rwanda’s tradition of Umuganda, community uplift through collective efforts, Digital Umuganda unites community contributors, developers, governments and NGOs to build open source language infrastructure by Africans for the world. On the far right, on my far right, I have Dr. Lilian Wanzare. Dr. Lilian is a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at Maseno University. Her research interests are in artificial intelligence and machine learning, in particular natural language processing, you will hear the term NLP a lot in this panel, and building text processing tools for low resource languages. She has served as the principal investigator for several research projects funded by BMGF, the Lacuna Fund, the Canadian Development Research Agency, IDRC, AI4D, among others. She has pioneered the Kenya Corpus, or Ken Corpus as we know it. which is a Kenyan language corpus for NLP and machine learning research. A project that looks at building data sets for training NLP tools for underserved languages, particularly those spoken in Kenya, with use cases geared towards agriculture, education, and health. She also works on sign language research, particularly Kenyan sign language, researching ways of bridging language barriers using virtual signing avatars. She holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics and an MSc in Language Science and Technology from Saarland University in Germany. Online, I will start with Dr. Melissa Omino. Melissa is the Director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology CIPIT at Strathmore University, a leading Eastern African AI Policy Hub and Data Governance Policy Center. Her research direction is focused on utilizing an African lens and a human rights lens. Part of the research conducted under Dr. Omino’s leadership involved mapping AI applications in Africa as an initial step in answering the question of what determines African AI and the problems that African AI should aim to solve. Dr. Omino is an intellectual property expert and has served as an advisory board member in several projects that intersect between AI and IP. This also includes driving a national AI strategy process and she has also led IP advisory for a global entity that is funding AI research in Africa. We also have Eli Elikplim Sabla. He is a technical advisor working for the Fair Forward program, a project within the Digital Transformation Center DTC Ghana. Within GIZ, GIZ is a German technical corporation. In this role, ELI focuses on AI policy advisory, open AI resource accessibility and capacity building to foster inclusive and sustainable AI development in Ghana. ELI has worked on the development of Ghana’s national AI strategy, collaborating with the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovation through the Agency of the Data Protection Commission. With a strong background in data science, monitoring and evaluation, project management and stakeholder engagement, ELI is working towards enhancing AI accessibility, local innovation and responsible AI adoption in Ghana. And last but definitely not least, we have Miss Viola Ochola. She is the Director of Access to Information. She is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a legal practitioner with administrative law, commercial law, human rights and law reforms experience spanning over 15 years. She also holds an MBA in strategic management and has extensive experience both in the public and the private sector. She is the immediate former manager in the Complaints, Investigations and Legal Services Department at the Commission on Administrative Justice, Kenya. Viola is an Open Government Leadership Fellow and a member of the Technical Committee on the Open Government Partnership, the Kenya chapter, in her capacity as cluster lead for the Access to Information commitment. She is passionate about open governance and the empowerment of citizenry to access services and benefit from opportunities offered by government. The reason I’ve gone through the elaborate introduction is for you to understand and know who will be talking to us in this topic this evening and also for you to To look up the panelists and reach out via LinkedIn and and and ask questions and connect and and continue to engage on the topic. Our topic today is Exploring new data governance mechanisms for language data driving NLP ecosystems in Africa the issue of Licensing of language has already come up in various workshops And today we want to have a more practical discussion that looks at Research that is currently going on in this topic Language is culture and culture is identity Yet the digital identity of Africa is skewed, manipulated, misinterpreted or disproportionately commercialized. The language data collection is characterized by a Significant disparity between large-scale publicly accessible resources and numerous smaller isolated projects. The Mozilla Foundation seeks to positively impact the way in which local language data is viewed, collected and stored and utilized. Currently, Mozilla Common Voice is the world’s largest most diverse crowdsourced multilingual Open speech corpus holding more than 30,000 hours and more than 180 different languages and is an example of a successful Community initiative that is also a digital public good It is a self-serving community platform as well as a lab for linguistic inclusion and for traversing data governance issues in NLP but there has been an Awakening and sentiment change amongst the language communities and this is what we will delve into today Speakers who crowdsource data sets and some of the issues that have been raised including inequitable investment locally sensitive community control, and the dynamics around power that are impacting the use of the language to build language technology. So in this session, having introduced and set the background for the problem, we are going to highlight the unintended and intended ripple effects of the CC0 open public license on communities and language data, and we want to look at governance and policy, how do they intersect, and what are some solutions that are being worked on to try and resolve the problem. I will go straight to you Lilian, and I will begin with a question on how can AI training data licenses be adapted to protect cultural sovereignty and ensure equitable benefit, especially for those

Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare: who have been marginalized. Thank you so much Mark for the introduction and for the question. I think we all know that when it comes to AI systems, data is core, and when it comes to NLP systems, that data is language. But what is language specifically, as Mark has mentioned here, it is really more than a group of words. It embodies really the aspirations of the communities from where they come from, and the cultural identity of the different communities. So if you look at that, and to think about this data, how can it be licensed in a way that still promotes the cultural values from where they come from. I will think about it as one, community centeredness. How do we go about collecting the data from the community themselves? How do we manage the use of this data along the journey as it’s been used in the NLP systems? And if you look at community centeredness, there’s a lot of things that go into it. One of them is consent. As they are going to provide the data, are they properly informed? And this informed consent is a continuous process. An understanding of the journey of their data as it goes around being developed and moves across as it is being used for different NLP systems. Now, how do we balance the issue of within the licensing, the issues of open sharing vis-a-vis benefit sharing? Those things should not be mutually exclusive. We can still have open sharing and still have benefit sharing. How can this be embodied within our existing licensing for us to be able to have both? In such a way that, yes, we still do open sharing to facilitate development of tools, development of systems that promote the language, but still from where the data comes from. It’s no longer extractive. They too have a benefit of whatever tools are going to be developed from them. And how does this move not just from the data community, but from the larger language community? Those who collected data themselves, but the larger community who speak the particular words, languages. And if I think about it in the last bit as a close, in this licensing ecosystem, I know there are different bodies that look about licensing and licensing in general. In this ecosystem, how transparent is it to enable different views and different combinations that support different requirements by different people? You’re able to really pull things together that are aligned to your values. And there’s no one size fits all. There can be different ways of combining the licensing, the ecosystem that still supports the community centeredness with the communities, but still allows for open sharing and development across the journey. That would be my opening remark.

Mark Irura: Thank you so much, Lilian. I will come to you, Melissa. And Lilian has mentioned something to do with the different needs and the different requirements. over the entire, let me call it language or AI language life cycle and she’s talked about values and to it I want to throw in the benefit. I will not just make it economic but when we think about benefit I would like you to help us to unpack that in view of the question like how do we think about sovereignty but we also enable these things based on the work that you’re currently undertaking. Okay, thank you so much Mark. I hope you can hear me. Yes. Excellent.

Melissa Omino: So I think when we think about the benefit I don’t think that we here should be discussing the benefit without referencing the language community because that’s where the benefit should flow. So in part of the work that CIPIT is doing in collaboration with the data science law lab at University of Pretoria is reaching out to these language communities and I’m being very specific about this term language community because there’s also a data community that exists and is made up of African AI data developers who actually collate languages into these particular data sets for natural language processing. We think that that community, the language community should be able to speak for itself and say what type of benefit that they would require for the particular use of that language data set and it has already been mentioned by Dr Lillian that different types of uses might require different types of benefits or might actually require a different thought as to what a benefit would mean. A lot of resistance towards having these language communities speak about quote-unquote a benefit is that it is automatically assumed to be a monetary thing or a royalty based thing but essentially we are saying that it should be given up to the community to decide what that should be. Most of my discussions with various communities, including the Tuluwa community via Masanui University, has been that they want something that is sustainable and that is community-based, meaning something that everyone in this language community can interact with and benefit from. And a monetary or royalty benefit doesn’t quite meet that mark. So, essentially, we need to think about the harmful dynamic that has been created with the current use of language datasets and the fact that these language datasets being commodified in AI systems primarily serves dominant languages and wealthy corporations, while marginalized communities receive no benefits, no matter how you define it, and often leave their cultural protocols, practices, values violated. So, a benefit could actually be the respect of the cultural knowledge that the language carries or even a share or access to this AI tool that has been built using the language data. So, can a licensing framework deliver this? I think that it can. That’s what the new dual license, the new Litiyabodo Open Data License, is meant to do. It’s supposed to provide an avenue where this conversation about what type of benefit would flow to a community would start from. And we are sort of trying to fit it into what currently governs the language dataset regime, which is copyright licensing. So, we came up with an alternative license that has elements of copyright, but also has elements of recognition of cultural knowledge and giving a voice to the community to negotiate about what they would want as a benefit. And here, I also have to signal the Creative Commons. community, where I am a board member, who just yesterday released publicly their work on preference signaling that would work hand in hand with Creative Commons licenses. And this essentially gives data stewards of particular data sets that are being utilized by AI to be able to say what they would prefer that data set to be used for or as. So this is actually signaling that this act of benefit recognition, benefit sharing is something that is being worked on and needs to be worked on. And maybe it’s not for us to determine, because it would just be us imposing our thoughts on these language communities, but bringing language communities to the forefront so they can speak for themselves as to what they would like. Thank you.

Mark Irura: Thanks, Melissa. It’s, I appreciate especially your comment on benefit. And with benefit, obviously, one of the things that is apparent in the continent is the issue of avoiding, you know, the recolonization through language and through AI. And I think this is an important question to ask you, I’ll come to you, back to you and ask about policy. When we think about policy, and we think about policy frameworks, what are broad principles that we can incorporate to think about, you know, equity and anti-extractiveness, so that there is mutual benefit, we do not stifle innovation, as Lillian said, but we’re able to grow and advance because we still need a commons to be able to move forward.

Melissa Omino: Thanks, Mark. I think that in order to have real equity, we need, we are required to think about communities as having ownership. and not just a group that would provide consent. Ownership and consent are two completely different things. The traditional data sharing regime treats communities as sources rather than partners, and this extracts value while leaving these very communities with just the risks and harms. So there has to be a shift where there is community data sovereignty, and I think Lilian has mentioned this or has alluded to this, and you have also alluded to that, Mark, where we legally recognize communities as collective data stewards with inherent rights to govern data about their members, territories, and cultural knowledge, which is where language would fall into. So individual consent is not enough when data affects an entire community. We need graduated consent that requires community consultation before individual agreements. The community gets to weigh in on whether that serves their collective interests. They get to voice what their collective interests are, and this includes verification rather than one-time permission and complete transparency about who is benefiting and how, and also deferring community veto power over harmful applications. So if someone profits from community data, the community must benefit too, and this means a mandatory benefit sharing requirement where communities might get a percentage of profits if that’s what they want, or they might get capacity building investments in infrastructure, education, and priority access to products developed using their community data, and this is not coming from me. This is coming from consultations that I’ve had with specific community members. So in order to prevent exploitation or to make this shift to this new utopia that I’m speaking about, We need strong anti-extractive safeguards, so data should not be sold to third parties without going back to the community for permission. Communities must be able to reclaim their data and take it elsewhere if they feel like, which requires regular audits with results shared publicly in accessible formats to ensure accountability. All these should be backed by penalties for violating community agreements. And I must admit here my bias as a lawyer, I’m really thinking about legal frameworks and structures. So that’s why I’m talking about accountability and I’m talking about enforcement mechanisms. But I think that really works currently in the language data sharing regime because they are using legal agreements being copyright licenses to govern the sharing of this data. So the conversation or rather what I’m trying to highlight here is that it’s ultimately about power and not just viewing data as a tool under a data governance regime, so not just about privacy. It’s really about where is the wealth and power concentrated and how can we then distribute this in an equitable manner. So legal frameworks would be one of the policy considerations that I would think of, but I also think that governments when coming up with their AI strategies and policies, which a plethora of those have happened on the African continent, they need to center culture as one of the main pillars of their strategy. I know the Kenyan strategy does that. It does mention that culture is an important factor. It does mention responsible and ethical AI, which this would be a pillar that this conversation would fall under. And it also talks about model development for problem solving on the continent. And you cannot talk about model development for problem solving if you do not think about language data sets. So I think that this is… essentially how we can get to a balance. It’s not about closing off the data, it’s about ensuring that it’s an equitable exchange between those who want to collect and use the data and the communities that have preserved and curated. And again, I say that there are two communities that exist, the language community that has suffered historical disadvantages in curating and preserving the language, particularly in the context of Africa, but there’s also the data community, which is the African AI developers who put in effort, who’ve used their skills and knowledge in creating these datasets, and who have an interaction with those who fund these activities. So there needs to be a balance for, let’s talk about these three parties in this context, those who would like to use the dataset, those who have curated the languages and preserved them, and those who actually have created the dataset.

Mark Irura: Thanks. Thanks, Melissa. I’m looking at you, Deshni Govender, now. Melissa has taken us to utopia, to canon, but we need to come back now here to what exists now that we could latch on to. And even as Deshni Govender gives her remarks, maybe I’ll ask you, I’ll ask you, Viola, to also be on standby to give us a different perspective, if there’s anything that Deshni Govender will have missed out. So over to you, Deshni Govender.

Deshni Govender: Sure. I think it’s important also to point out that when we mention the concept of extractive practices, that it’s not always a foreign versus local context. And it’s not a cross-border issue, because I think that extractive practices often happen within countries and within the continent under the guise of the open collaboration concept. I do think that policy protections that cover digital work should also actually take their foundational basis from existing protections that are afforded to cultural and indigenous communities which exist in a civil context. So, assuming those foundational building blocks exist, then policy protection can almost come into play in two ways. Sorry. Policy protection can come into play in two ways, which is, A, as a source for human rights, because that’s really important protecting labor rights and gig workers who also often do the unsexy work of labeling data, of training algorithms, but also come in as a counter leverage point in the context of open source and digital public goods. And we’ve heard the speakers mention the concept of quid pro quo. If you take something, give something back. And I’ll just run through very quickly a few points. So, fair sharing is one way. And then my co-panelist Melissa mentioned the Noodle license, but there’s also the Inkuba license that was developed. Another way is if a commercial actor has to cross-subsidize public maintenance for open source AI resources, what would that look like? Does it come with conditions? But the use of open grants or long-term partnerships that actually benefit the community. So, one example was a grant that google.org had given to Ghana NLP, which had really very minimal conditions attached that the community could use as they saw fit. I think the other one for that AI policy could include, which doesn’t often happen and should, is having where there are foreign investors or foreign partners, including local partners as equal collaborators, because oftentimes localized partners come in as just consultants. And when you have an equal collaborator, you have a co-ownership of the data corpora, and that could be often done by MOUs or just general contracts. And I think that policies should make AI developers accountable and that accountability can look like… impact reports or independent audits. I will mention very quickly something that I came across before I hand over to Viola in my research, something that’s called the Nagoya Protocol. And this actually exists in the biodiversity space, which basically requires fair and equitable sharing of benefits in the use of genetic resources. And that’s like plants, animals, microorganisms, etc. And I feel like if we want to learn, we could learn from parallels like this. So establishing something like a linguistic protocol for use of African languages and AI could be a great policy tool for regional principles or codes of conduct. I guess another policy tool could be the AI policy playbook that was recently launched at the UNESCO conference a few weeks ago. But I’ll stop here.

Mark Irura: Over to you, Viola. All right.

Ochola Viola: Thank you. Thank you, Mark. And having speaking after Melissa and Deshni Govenderni, I think most of them have sort of taken out most of the policy requirements. But I would still emphasize on the issue of the data sovereignty and equitable data sharing that both Melissa and Deshni Govenderni talked about. The local African communities should be able to control the data from the point of collection and up to the point of usage of these AI technologies so that they are able to be part of the process. So the whole process has to be inclusive. They should not just be there at the point of information givers or data givers, but they should be involved in the whole process. And Melissa also mentioned having that she’s a lawyer, so she’ll be biased around the legal framework. So I’ll also speak, I’m a lawyer. So definitely the legal framework around the collection of this data. has to be very stringent, has to be very robust, so that the local communities are protected from possible exploitation from the external of the big tech, so to speak, so that even at the point of usage, the benefits, whatever way they may define these benefits, they are able to benefit from that, so that it’s not an issue that they feel that are being exploited. Quickly, the aspect of community ownership should not just be something that is entrenched in the law, but there should be actual mechanisms that have been operationalized within the ecosystem, within the African countries, so that these local communities can be reached, because sometimes you’ll realize that some of these communities are in very remote areas in the African continent, and sometimes even in terms of the digital infrastructure, they cannot even access some of these benefits or some of these issues that the external parties want to develop. So, it would be important for the governments, at least the African governments, to make sure that the infrastructure is available, so that these communities can be able to reach out to these investors who might want to develop these AI technologies using their languages. And with that, like I said, the engagements have to be very meaningful. It shouldn’t just be, like one of my co-panelists said, something that you’re just called to give information or to give data. You have to be aware and to understand what exactly you’re giving out and the possible repercussions. And finally, I’ll speak to another policy as perspective, that one of building the capacity and skills development of the African nations, because we realize sometimes the issue is the lack of skills and the lack of the capacity to do this within the continent. So it’s important for the various policy frameworks to be able to put in place possible training solutions or skills development strategies, so that some of these technologies are homegrown and home-owned also, so that you then now even develop a framework within which you can transfer the knowledge locally beyond just waiting for the external parties to come in. And this, it’s not necessarily to be done within the country. You can also collaborate with the big tech to be able to develop the skills within the continent, then now the skills will be developed from there. So I think I’ll stop there. Thank you.

Mark Irura: Thanks Viola. And also thank you for such a broad response. You covered infrastructure, you covered capacity building, and this speaks to an ecosystem approach. You can’t just develop infrastructure only. You can’t just build capacity. You can’t just develop policy. So I will look at you some now, because when we are coming up with national AI strategies, I know Rwanda has one, the goal is to think about an ecosystem, is to think about where do we want to go and what do we want to achieve. And I will also ask you, Eli, to share experiences from Ghana, since you’ve gone through this cycle. I will start with you, Sam. And it’s an abstract question, but it’s also a simple question. Very simple. Can government support community-led governance? Could government partner? It’s always top-down. It’s always, this is what you need to do. What do you think, like, these strategies can help to support the growth of the AI ecosystem that is coming up? Thank you.

Rutunda Samuel: Thank you, Mark. Yeah, I think, first, the AI strategies or AI policies, they help within these three categories. First, they raise awareness. Usually, once something becomes a strategy or a policy, it makes people to know about it. So AI, once it’s implemented, people are now looking at all the components of AI, of which currently the major one is the language component. Second, it creates a working framework that AI governments and other entities can use as a guideline or as a framework to follow. And then it also adds some accountability, because they have to explain something. And this helps us, where in the absence of that policy, this could not have been a way. And then, in terms of what it creates, it starts creating a discussion. It means now when you go to them, you can have a base of how you can discuss. You have some place from where to start the discussion, and then they can look at it, and they can say, oh, we have actually a plan, we have a policy or a strategy. this is what it says. And then the thing about language is cross-cutting and it touches many aspects of everyday life and then start creating synergies. So for example someone in health can say oh actually we are thinking of using this tool but then they don’t know how to do it but given that there is a policy they have where to ask and then it’s that even us as a community start saying oh how about we work within the health for example medicinal plants is it something we can capture within our languages. So it creates synergies and collaborations and then ultimately the goal is to raise resources. So with these discussions with these collaborations how as a country we start now streamlining how we raise resources because there is a need to raise the resources. Yeah I think that’s what I would say. I’ll invite you Eli to also

Mark Irura: contribute to that point. Bearing also like we have a global audience and we have also ways that we are trying to see and build these ecosystems in a way that others could learn from us. Right thank you very much Mark and so I

Elikplim Sabblah: particularly would say that government should definitely support local communities to take ownership or lead on data governance so far as language data is concerned. Government should actually empower local communities. I mean by thinking about the idea of national strategies AI policies and AI strategies even looking at the way they are developed and drafted it actually includes whichever approach is taken. includes local communities and major stakeholders. And so just by that definition, through stakeholder consultations, ecosystem analysis and research, SWOT analysis, all that process should already include communities that are existing in the space. And so if that is the case, then it is, in the first step, a way of supporting the community to also take ownership of whatever comes out of there, of what data governance is concerning in a particular country. Now, what I’ve learned in the process in Ghana is that currently we have a draft national AI strategy that is undergoing review. And throughout the review processes, we reach out to various groups and trying to understand their specific needs and what they would like to see in the reviewed document. And it has been consistently spoken of how they need to see representation in there or how they would like to be empowered to be able to govern data sets that are generated within the same space. Now, to this, I would say that in the already existing draft, there is a pillar that actually speaks to this, and it’s called the Pillar 5, which says that the strategy seeks to provide data collectors with guidelines and principles for collecting data, storing and sharing it. I think this creates an avenue for the government to empower local communities to be able to take the lead or ownership as far as data governance is concerned. If the strategy would actually pinpoint specific principles and guidelines that these communities need to take, that would eventually influence the level of ownership they would be able to take of the data governance system in the country. So, I think a lot has been said already, and we also need to take a look at the adoption of alternative licensing models like the NUDO that has already been mentioned by Dr. Melissa on the call. in the session. And I think that this, when we want to take this approach, I think it will all go well for the communities involved. Yeah.

Mark Irura: Thanks, Eli. I think this is something also that always comes up with me and this morning in a session I had it. So I wanna put an open question to the panel. So you’ve talked about rules and regulations. I’ve not talked about money. Some before this panel asked me a difficult question about money. And one of the challenges even that came up earlier was the procurement systems is there because procurement provides an opportunity for these communities, developer communities that Melissa mentioned. And even Viola talked about like people who are in remote areas, they cannot benefit because there’s no infrastructure, there’s no connectivity. So to this panel and to anyone who might have a thought on it, the issue about public procurement and the ability to procure innovation, that conversation with government, not just in Africa but globally because I think that’s also an issue. Do you have any reflections on it? We have representation from government but we’ll not put her on the spot. But anyone who has a view, like what could we do in this regard so that even as we talk about governance, procurement becomes an issue and thinking about procuring innovation. Any thoughts?

Rutunda Samuel: Yeah, let me start. Usually, I don’t know, I was talking to someone and say, government is run by accountants. And accountants, they want facts. They want, oh, what is this going to do? And then it’s still in the early stage of the language technology, particularly within our domain, especially for low-resource languages. So it’s very hard to show the facts. It’s something to say, oh, I’m going to take a chance and then I will see. Yeah, but I think there is a need to take a chance. For example, when we worked in the beginning with Common Voice for Rwanda, there was no policy, there was no AI ecosystem, there was nothing. But then there was a leap forward to say, okay, let’s take a chance. And now six years, I think, 30,000 hours have been collected. I think there is, at least last time I checked, there’s around more than 10 African languages that were done. So there is a need to take those chance. But then that requires us to talk to people and to convince and to change mentalities to say, okay, just this is what happened. And then another thing, currently I’m also looking, although we are talking about language, we should look at the settings. So for these technologies to be used, there’s maybe access to the internet or the digital literacy and others. So we’ll have to look globally, but there is a need of changing of the mindset to deploy some use cases and then to learn from it before needing to first having the proofs so that you can deploy.

Deshni Govender: I think I would come in for a bit. So one of the things we know particularly about African language or African NLP or just NLP for indigenous languages is that a lot of the time it’s oral and it’s particularly so for African languages but also for other cultures. And the problem with having culture or language that is intended for oral knowledge, it means that it’s also shaped by tone, it’s shaped by cadence, it’s shaped by who is telling the story and what is that meaning that’s attached to it. And also communal use. And the problem with that is that it creates a little bit of a NLP design flaw. For example, like a design challenge and how do you actually then codify knowledge that is not as easy as taking something that is a book and then making it digital. And so the point I’m trying to make is that when we’re talking about procurement and talking about what it is that we need to do, we need to understand what asset we’re actually working with. And it’s kind of hard to understand the asset that you’re working with if you’re not even sure how to put it into create an asset value or an asset form. You know it’s an asset, but you don’t exactly know how to make this tangible and make it in a form that somebody says, oh, that’s actually interesting. I’m willing to invest in it or I’m willing to do this or I’m willing to do that. And so it’s the difficult part of trying to actually unpack that and then unpack it properly and in a way that you actually shape and preserve and protect the cultures and the nuances that come with trying to take this raw material that is an asset to the people, but then make it a tangible and international value that you could say, cool, as a country, we have this and we have this. Now let’s see how we can use this as a bargaining tool to come in for infrastructure development, to come in for knowledge sharing, but still protect the people.

Melissa Omino: I’m going to ask you a very lawyerly question, which is when you talk about procurement, are we also talking about funding, right? Because when you say money, I think about funding. And if you think about that in the local context, I really think that the challenge is on government to move away from looking to other people to save us. And I’m really stealing that sentiment from Dr. Albert Kahira, who was one of the keynote speakers at COSA, where he said, nobody’s coming to save us. We need to start thinking of ways where we can invest, locally invest in natural language processing so that we can then call the shots or really have the terms, put down the terms of how the language data would be used. And I think this is something that government is very much aware of. A lot of conversation around the Kenya National AI Strategy has been how will it be implemented? The Kenya government made the decision to keep the implementation plan away from public purview, but there is an implementation plan there. There are key performance indicators there, and there are key partners who have been identified to help with the implementation of that AI strategy. Because essentially this conversation that we’re having, we are right at the beginning cycle of natural language processing, and the experts in the room can say that. We are merely talking about data collection when we talk about language data. We need to get into the conversation of building models that will utilize this language data. And that’s why we are up in arms about having that language data open and free for all, because it will minimize the ability for local companies to invest in that language data and build models, because the market will thoroughly thrash them, if you’re talking about market economics, demand, supply, et cetera, which also as a lawyer I might not be very good at. That’s the end of my disclaimers. So I think when we talk about procurement, we need to think about funding. we need to also stop looking outside, we need to think about locally on the African continent, how can we fund? At the Kigali AI Summit earlier this year, there was a conversation about infrastructure, there was a conversation about having data centres, which is very integral to how do we control who can access and use the data, and there was a conversation about starting to have particular data centres in particular regions, and the question was, will it be accessible to African developers, or are we creating data centres for others to use on the continent in order to be compliant with data governance regimes. So I would say for public procurement to make sense, we need to first think about funding. To think about funding, we must challenge local investors to put their money where their mouth is and invest locally, not just in data collection, but in the development of models, because as far as I know, nobody outside is actually funding the development of models in order for us to actually truly have African AI.

Mark Irura: Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Melissa. I’ll come to you Viola, and if you’re online and you have a question that you’d like to pose, please put it in the chat. Over to you Viola.

Ochola Viola: Thank you, Mark. Mine will be quick. Melissa has talked about the funding aspect, because you know, you can’t talk about procurement without the funding bit, but there’s the other aspect of procurement, which is the process, and I believe that was where the challenge you were speaking on was. The question is, does even the procurement officer understand what it is? In government, where I am, there’s always a process. For example, in Kenya, there’s the Public Procurement Act that outlines the process of procurement, and part of the process is you need to give specifications and you say that this is the end product. Now, sometimes the procurement person does not, is not aware of AI, let alone even, you know, any other thing. So it will be difficult for such a person to even appreciate where you’re coming from, if you want to procure this. So maybe as a way forward, and now that Kenya has developed the strategy, it’s very fresh. It was launched in March. And this I will tell you, we may perhaps need to just build the capacity of some of these key offices, for example, the procurement arm of government, so that they’re able to appreciate that this may not necessarily be a tangible item that we are looking at, but it could be something else. So that is number one. And number two, the laws, because now the laws, as we have them now, do not appreciate such things that we may need to review the laws so that they capture these angles. And these laws should not only be reviewed by lawyers, because I mean, Melissa knows, you need to have the technical capacity to be able to put it in the laws in a way that then it will inform what you want to get at the end of the tunnel. So I think I’ll stop there with respect to procurement. Thank you. There’s a friend of mine who says, for government,

Mark Irura: procuring a packet of milk and procuring an AI system is the same. It’s not supposed to be like that. I will come to you, Eli, and I will ask a question. What sort of skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively?

Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare: What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively? And for them, they really don’t have a governance framework. If somebody wants to use our data, how do they come in? If I want to share my data, how do they come in? If the media wants to share the data, how do they come in? All these data generators, how do they come in? What is their benefit structure? As again, you can see then, it is because they really don’t know what comes together to develop these AI models. There’s a really disjointness in terms of how this comes in, vis-à-vis the model. I want a model that’s able to help me with chemistry in the law. I’m asking, do you even understand what you’re saying? First of all, do you have chemical terms in the law? Before this model can start talking about chemistry in the law, how do we get it there? You see, there’s the utopia of this thing is magical, but there is no understanding of how do we get there, and how do all the stakeholders come into place to make us get there. So that really needs to be put into place. Thank you.

Mark Irura: Thanks. Eli, I’ll ask you maybe almost to wrap it up or to talk a little bit about anything to do with community work, right? Since we are at this place where we’re thinking about governance of products that will be developed for and by these communities and probably in collaboration with them.

Elikplim Sabblah: Thank you very much, Mark. And I don’t know, for the past few responses that have come from the other panelists, one theme is connecting all of it, and you can hear a lot about maybe outreach and community sensitization and all of that. I think that we have to understand that some definite skills have to be built. We need people in the communities who understand digital rights, who understand the importance of data, and who understand linguistics or who have skills in linguistics to be able to maximize the opportunity that this technology brings to their communities. Now, one of the things that I’ve come… to understand is that sometimes there is community fatigue regarding contributing to data collection schemes and so there’s desensitization would make them understand that there is a purpose for this and they may not have immediate should I say benefits in terms of maybe monetary terms or whatever support they may need in the immediate sense or but it goes a long way to contribute to something bigger that can actually benefit them immediately and then also the nation as a whole. So I think that it is important for us to understand the need for outreach programs to reach out to people in communities to let them understand the purpose of artificial intelligence. Recently we did a research trying to understand how women-led SMEs or entrepreneurs are using AI and NLP tools to be able to interact with their customers and partners and all of that and we came to the understanding that most of them are probably even using tools that have AI algorithms working in them but they don’t even know and then also some of them will even express a certain level of fatigue as I already mentioned that they are tired of contributing to data collection schemes and stuff like that but then we actually need people with indigenous knowledge and indigenous experience to contribute to these things. Now one other thing that I wanted to also point out is the need for us to let these models that we’re developing on the African continent to represent African culture and one culture is the shared ownership of resources and when you talk about African culture and oral tradition you’ll notice that proverbs and idiomatic expressions and stories don’t have proprietary ownership, it belongs to the community and so that should be reflected in the models that we build and in our data collection activities so that data and models are openly accessible to all. I think I mashed up a lot of things but yeah basically that’s what I wanted to end with. Thank you. Thanks Eli.

Mark Irura: So I will, a question has come. Wow, and we have just run out of time. Lilian, in 30 seconds, how to bridge the gap between building capacity for local communities in AI beyond collection and increasing usage of AI models within those same communities. 30 seconds, please. It is really about partnership and

Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare: collaboration. If we think about the whole model, we have the local ecosystem, the government, the funders, internal players. How do we come together collaboratively to be able to make this possible? It cannot be disjointed. It has to be a collaborative effort within all members of the ecosystem.

Mark Irura: Thank you. I don’t want to recap what has been said. I began the panel with an elaborate introduction of everyone. Maybe I didn’t introduce myself properly. I’m Mark I work with the Mozilla Foundation. You can follow us online, each one of us. You can hit the subscribe button and like. No, you just follow us on LinkedIn and feel free. I’m making a pact with each of the panelists. Feel free to reach out and ask them about the work and about this work and about what they’re doing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much and thank you for being part of this panel. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Agreement points

Communities should have ownership and control over their language data rather than just providing consent

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Ochola Viola
– Elikplim Sabblah

Arguments

Communities should be recognized as collective data stewards with inherent rights, not just sources providing consent

Community ownership should be legally entrenched with operationalized mechanisms to reach remote communities

Government should empower local communities to take ownership of data governance through inclusive strategy development

Summary

All three speakers strongly advocate for moving beyond traditional consent models to recognize communities as having inherent ownership rights over their language data, with legal frameworks and government support to operationalize this ownership.

Topics

Human rights | Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural

Communities need capacity building and skills development to effectively participate in AI governance

Speakers

– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare
– Elikplim Sabblah
– Ochola Viola

Arguments

Communities need understanding of AI model development, governance frameworks, and benefit structures to effectively participate

Communities need people with digital rights knowledge, data importance understanding, and linguistics skills

Local communities should control data from collection through usage with meaningful engagement throughout the process

Summary

There is strong consensus that communities currently lack the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively govern their language technologies, requiring targeted capacity building in technical understanding, digital rights, and governance frameworks.

Topics

Development | Sociocultural | Human rights

Current licensing and governance frameworks are inadequate and need fundamental reform

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Deshni Govender
– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Arguments

Alternative licensing models like the Litiyabodo Open Data License can provide frameworks for community benefit negotiation

Extractive practices occur both within and across borders, requiring policy protections based on existing cultural and indigenous rights

Community-centered data collection with informed consent and benefit sharing while maintaining open access

Summary

All speakers agree that existing licensing frameworks like CC0 are insufficient and that new models are needed that can balance open access with community rights and benefit sharing.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Intellectual property rights | Human rights

Government procurement systems are inadequate for AI and language technology innovation

Speakers

– Mark Irura
– Ochola Viola
– Rutunda Samuel

Arguments

For government, procuring traditional goods and AI systems is treated the same way, which creates fundamental procurement challenges

Capacity building for procurement officers and legal framework updates are needed to handle AI procurement effectively

Government procurement requires mindset changes and willingness to take chances on emerging language technologies

Summary

There is clear agreement that current government procurement processes are not designed to handle AI technologies effectively, treating complex AI systems the same as simple commodities, requiring both capacity building and procedural reforms.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Economic | Development

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize that communities should determine their own definition of benefits from language data use, rejecting the assumption that benefits must be monetary and advocating for community-defined, sustainable benefits.

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Arguments

Language communities should define their own benefits rather than having monetary benefits imposed on them

Community-centered data collection with informed consent and benefit sharing while maintaining open access

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers advocate for strong local investment and robust legal protections to prevent exploitation by external actors, emphasizing the need for African-controlled AI development.

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Ochola Viola

Arguments

Governments need to invest locally in NLP rather than looking externally, and challenge local investors to fund model development

Legal frameworks must be robust with stringent data collection rules to protect communities from exploitation

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers see national AI strategies as crucial tools for creating frameworks, raising awareness, and enabling community participation in governance, though they approach from different angles of implementation.

Speakers

– Rutunda Samuel
– Elikplim Sabblah

Arguments

AI strategies raise awareness, create working frameworks, add accountability, and help raise resources for language technology development

Government should empower local communities to take ownership of data governance through inclusive strategy development

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected consensus

The need for collaborative partnerships rather than top-down approaches

Speakers

– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare
– Elikplim Sabblah
– Melissa Omino

Arguments

Bridging capacity gaps requires collaborative partnerships between local ecosystems, government, funders, and international players

Government should empower local communities to take ownership of data governance through inclusive strategy development

Communities should be recognized as collective data stewards with inherent rights, not just sources providing consent

Explanation

Despite coming from different professional backgrounds (academic researcher, government advisor, and legal expert), there is unexpected consensus on rejecting traditional top-down approaches in favor of genuine partnership models that recognize community agency and expertise.

Topics

Development | Human rights | Legal and regulatory

The complexity of oral African languages creates unique technical challenges for AI development

Speakers

– Deshni Govender
– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Arguments

African languages being primarily oral creates NLP design challenges in codifying knowledge that isn’t easily digitized

Community-centered data collection with informed consent and benefit sharing while maintaining open access

Explanation

There is unexpected technical consensus between a policy expert and an academic researcher about the fundamental challenges that oral traditions pose for AI development, recognizing that African languages require different approaches than text-based systems.

Topics

Sociocultural | Infrastructure | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers demonstrate remarkable consensus across multiple critical areas: the inadequacy of current licensing frameworks, the need for community ownership and control over language data, the importance of capacity building, and the failure of existing government procurement systems to handle AI innovation effectively.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with strong implications for policy reform. The agreement spans technical, legal, and social dimensions, suggesting a mature understanding of the interconnected challenges facing African language data governance. This consensus provides a solid foundation for developing comprehensive solutions that address community rights, technical requirements, and governance frameworks simultaneously.

Different viewpoints

Approach to funding and investment in African NLP development

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Rutunda Samuel

Arguments

Governments need to invest locally in NLP rather than looking externally, and challenge local investors to fund model development

Government procurement requires mindset changes and willingness to take chances on emerging language technologies

Summary

Omino advocates for a complete shift away from external funding and emphasizes local investment as the solution, while Samuel focuses on government willingness to take risks and change procurement mindsets to support emerging technologies, regardless of funding source

Topics

Economic | Development | Legal and regulatory

Primary barriers to effective language data governance

Speakers

– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare
– Ochola Viola

Arguments

Communities need understanding of AI model development, governance frameworks, and benefit structures to effectively participate

Capacity building for procurement officers and legal framework updates are needed to handle AI procurement effectively

Summary

Wanzare identifies community knowledge gaps as the primary barrier, while Viola focuses on government institutional capacity and legal framework inadequacies as the main obstacles

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural

Unexpected differences

Role of external versus internal capacity building

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Elikplim Sabblah

Arguments

Governments need to invest locally in NLP rather than looking externally, and challenge local investors to fund model development

Communities need people with digital rights knowledge, data importance understanding, and linguistics skills

Explanation

While both speakers advocate for local empowerment, Omino strongly rejects external involvement and emphasizes complete local self-reliance, while Sabblah appears more open to external collaboration for capacity building. This disagreement is unexpected given their shared goal of community empowerment

Topics

Development | Economic | Human rights

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers show remarkable consensus on fundamental goals – community sovereignty, equitable benefit sharing, and the need for better governance frameworks. However, they disagree significantly on implementation strategies, funding approaches, and the role of external actors

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level with high strategic implications. While speakers agree on problems and desired outcomes, their different approaches to solutions could lead to fragmented or competing initiatives. The disagreements reflect different professional backgrounds and regional experiences, suggesting need for integrated approaches that combine legal, technical, policy, and community perspectives

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize that communities should determine their own definition of benefits from language data use, rejecting the assumption that benefits must be monetary and advocating for community-defined, sustainable benefits.

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Arguments

Language communities should define their own benefits rather than having monetary benefits imposed on them

Community-centered data collection with informed consent and benefit sharing while maintaining open access

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers advocate for strong local investment and robust legal protections to prevent exploitation by external actors, emphasizing the need for African-controlled AI development.

Speakers

– Melissa Omino
– Ochola Viola

Arguments

Governments need to invest locally in NLP rather than looking externally, and challenge local investors to fund model development

Legal frameworks must be robust with stringent data collection rules to protect communities from exploitation

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers see national AI strategies as crucial tools for creating frameworks, raising awareness, and enabling community participation in governance, though they approach from different angles of implementation.

Speakers

– Rutunda Samuel
– Elikplim Sabblah

Arguments

AI strategies raise awareness, create working frameworks, add accountability, and help raise resources for language technology development

Government should empower local communities to take ownership of data governance through inclusive strategy development

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Sociocultural

Key takeaways

Language data governance requires a shift from treating communities as data sources to recognizing them as collective data stewards with inherent ownership rights

Community-centered approaches must balance open sharing with equitable benefit distribution, allowing communities to define what benefits mean to them beyond just monetary compensation

Alternative licensing frameworks like the Litiyabodo Open Data License can provide mechanisms for community benefit negotiation while respecting cultural protocols

Government AI strategies should center culture as a main pillar and include communities as equal partners throughout the entire AI development lifecycle, not just at data collection stage

Local investment and funding in NLP model development is crucial for African countries to control their language technology destiny rather than relying on external actors

Capacity building is needed across multiple levels – from procurement officers understanding AI to communities understanding digital rights and data governance

The oral nature of African languages creates unique technical challenges for NLP that require specialized approaches to preserve cultural nuances and communal knowledge systems

Successful language technology governance requires collaborative partnerships between local ecosystems, governments, funders, and international players rather than siloed approaches

Resolutions and action items

Panelists committed to being available for follow-up engagement via LinkedIn for continued discussion on language data governance topics

Reference made to Creative Commons releasing preference signaling tools that work with CC licenses to allow data stewards to specify preferred uses

Ghana’s draft national AI strategy includes Pillar 5 providing guidelines for data collectors on collection, storage and sharing practices

Kenya’s AI strategy implementation plan exists with identified key partners and performance indicators, though kept from public view

Unresolved issues

How to effectively operationalize community data sovereignty mechanisms, especially for reaching remote communities with limited digital infrastructure

Specific implementation details for alternative licensing frameworks and how they would work in practice across different African contexts

How to reform government procurement processes to effectively handle AI and language technology acquisitions

Bridging the gap between data collection activities and actual model development/deployment that benefits local communities

How to address community fatigue from repeated data collection schemes while building sustainable engagement

Balancing the need for open data commons to drive innovation with community ownership and benefit-sharing requirements

How to quantify and preserve the intangible cultural assets embedded in oral language traditions within digital frameworks

Suggested compromises

Graduated consent models that require both individual consent and community consultation before data agreements

Dual licensing approaches that allow for both open sharing and community benefit requirements

Cross-subsidization models where commercial actors support public maintenance of open source AI resources

Equal collaboration partnerships with co-ownership structures rather than consultant relationships between foreign and local partners

Mandatory benefit sharing with flexible definitions allowing communities to choose between monetary compensation, capacity building, infrastructure investment, or priority access to developed products

Learning from existing frameworks like the Nagoya Protocol in biodiversity to create linguistic protocols for African language use in AI

Combining legal frameworks with cultural recognition elements to respect both copyright and indigenous knowledge systems

I think it’s important also to point out that when we mention the concept of extractive practices, that it’s not always a foreign versus local context. And it’s not a cross-border issue, because I think that extractive practices often happen within countries and within the continent under the guise of the open collaboration concept.

Speaker

Deshni Govender

Reason

This comment challenged the common narrative that data exploitation is primarily a North-South or foreign-domestic issue. It introduced the uncomfortable reality that extractive practices can occur within African countries themselves, even when framed as collaborative efforts. This reframed the entire discussion from an ‘us vs. them’ mentality to a more nuanced understanding of power dynamics.

Impact

This shifted the conversation away from simplistic colonial framings and forced participants to consider more complex internal dynamics. It elevated the discussion to examine power structures more critically, regardless of geographic origin, and influenced subsequent speakers to focus on governance mechanisms rather than just external protection.

Ownership and consent are two completely different things. The traditional data sharing regime treats communities as sources rather than partners, and this extracts value while leaving these very communities with just the risks and harms.

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Reason

This distinction fundamentally challenged the prevailing approach to data governance in AI. Most frameworks focus on obtaining consent, but Melissa highlighted that consent without ownership still perpetuates extractive relationships. This was a paradigm-shifting observation that questioned the adequacy of current ethical AI practices.

Impact

This comment became a cornerstone for the rest of the discussion. Multiple speakers referenced this ownership vs. consent framework, and it directly influenced the conversation toward community data sovereignty and benefit-sharing mechanisms. It provided a theoretical foundation that other panelists built upon throughout the session.

The problem with having culture or language that is intended for oral knowledge, it means that it’s also shaped by tone, it’s shaped by cadence, it’s shaped by who is telling the story and what is that meaning that’s attached to it… And so it’s kind of hard to understand the asset that you’re working with if you’re not even sure how to put it into create an asset value or an asset form.

Speaker

Deshni Govender

Reason

This comment introduced a critical technical and cultural complexity that hadn’t been adequately addressed. It highlighted the fundamental challenge of digitizing oral traditions without losing their essence, and the difficulty of creating economic value from intangible cultural assets. This bridged technical NLP challenges with cultural preservation concerns.

Impact

This deepened the technical discussion and helped explain why traditional licensing and governance models are inadequate for African language data. It influenced the conversation toward more nuanced approaches that consider the unique characteristics of oral traditions, and helped other participants understand why simple digitization approaches fail.

I really think that the challenge is on government to move away from looking to other people to save us… We need to start thinking of ways where we can invest, locally invest in natural language processing so that we can then call the shots or really have the terms.

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Reason

This was a provocative call for self-reliance that challenged the dependency mindset often present in development discussions. It shifted focus from seeking external validation and funding to building internal capacity and control. The comment was particularly powerful because it connected funding, sovereignty, and strategic control.

Impact

This comment redirected the conversation from governance mechanisms to fundamental questions about economic independence and strategic autonomy. It influenced subsequent discussions about procurement, funding, and capacity building, with other speakers building on this theme of local ownership and investment.

Usually, I don’t know, I was talking to someone and say, government is run by accountants. And accountants, they want facts. They want, oh, what is this going to do? And then it’s still in the early stage of the language technology… So it’s very hard to show the facts. It’s something to say, oh, I’m going to take a chance and then I will see.

Speaker

Rutunda Samuel

Reason

This comment provided a refreshingly honest and practical perspective on the bureaucratic challenges of innovation in government. It humanized the procurement discussion by acknowledging the risk-averse nature of public administration and the inherent uncertainty in emerging technologies. The informal tone made complex policy issues more accessible.

Impact

This comment grounded the theoretical policy discussions in practical reality. It helped explain why good intentions often fail in implementation and influenced other speakers to consider the human and institutional barriers to their proposed solutions. It also led to Viola’s important points about capacity building for procurement officers.

For example, in Kenya, there’s the Public Procurement Act that outlines the process of procurement… Now, sometimes the procurement person does not, is not aware of AI, let alone even, you know, any other thing. So it will be difficult for such a person to even appreciate where you’re coming from, if you want to procure this.

Speaker

Ochola Viola

Reason

This comment identified a critical but often overlooked implementation gap – the disconnect between policy aspirations and administrative capacity. It highlighted how existing legal frameworks and human capacity constraints can undermine even well-intentioned AI strategies. This was a practical insight that connected legal, technical, and human resource challenges.

Impact

This comment brought the discussion full circle from high-level policy to ground-level implementation challenges. It influenced the conversation toward practical capacity building needs and helped other participants understand why technical solutions alone are insufficient without corresponding institutional development.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by challenging simplistic narratives and introducing crucial complexities. Deshni’s point about internal extractive practices prevented the conversation from falling into colonial binaries, while Melissa’s ownership vs. consent distinction provided a theoretical framework that anchored much of the subsequent discussion. The technical insights about oral traditions added necessary depth to understanding why standard approaches fail, while the practical observations about government bureaucracy and procurement grounded theoretical discussions in implementation reality. Together, these comments elevated the conversation from abstract policy discussions to a nuanced examination of power, culture, technology, and practical governance challenges. They created a more sophisticated understanding of the ecosystem needed to support equitable language technology development in Africa, moving beyond simple solutions to acknowledge the interconnected nature of technical, cultural, legal, and institutional challenges.

How can AI training data licenses be adapted to protect cultural sovereignty and ensure equitable benefit for marginalized communities?

Speaker

Mark Irura

Explanation

This is a fundamental question about developing new licensing frameworks that balance open sharing with community protection and benefit-sharing

How do we balance the issue of open sharing vis-à-vis benefit sharing within licensing frameworks?

Speaker

Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Explanation

This addresses the core tension between making data openly available for development while ensuring communities benefit from their contributions

How transparent is the licensing ecosystem to enable different views and different combinations that support different requirements by different people?

Speaker

Lilian Diana Awuor Wanzare

Explanation

This explores the need for flexible, transparent licensing systems that can accommodate diverse community needs and values

What type of benefit should flow to language communities for the use of their language datasets?

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Explanation

This requires direct consultation with language communities to understand their preferences for benefits, which may not be monetary

Can a licensing framework deliver community-defined benefits and respect for cultural protocols?

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Explanation

This examines whether legal frameworks like the Litiyabodo Open Data License can effectively address community needs and cultural values

How can governments support community-led governance rather than top-down approaches?

Speaker

Mark Irura

Explanation

This explores mechanisms for governments to partner with and empower communities in governing their own language technologies

How can public procurement systems be adapted to support innovation in language technology for local communities?

Speaker

Mark Irura

Explanation

This addresses the challenge of government procurement processes that don’t understand or accommodate AI and language technology innovations

What skills would communities need to build in order to govern their own language technologies effectively?

Speaker

Mark Irura

Explanation

This identifies the capacity building needs for communities to meaningfully participate in governing their language data and technologies

How to bridge the gap between building capacity for local communities in AI beyond collection and increasing usage of AI models within those same communities?

Speaker

Audience member (via chat)

Explanation

This addresses the challenge of moving communities from data contributors to active users and beneficiaries of AI technologies

How do we establish something like a linguistic protocol for use of African languages in AI, similar to the Nagoya Protocol for biodiversity?

Speaker

Deshni Govender

Explanation

This explores applying existing international frameworks for genetic resources to language resources, requiring further research into legal parallels

How do we codify and create asset value from oral knowledge that is shaped by tone, cadence, and communal use?

Speaker

Deshni Govender

Explanation

This addresses the technical and conceptual challenge of preserving the full cultural context of oral languages in digital formats

How can local African investors be challenged to fund not just data collection but model development?

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Explanation

This explores the need for local investment in the full AI development pipeline to maintain control over African language technologies

Will African data centres be accessible to African developers or primarily serve external users?

Speaker

Melissa Omino

Explanation

This examines whether infrastructure development will truly benefit local developers or primarily serve compliance needs for external actors

Summary

This IGF session focused on presenting an award to the first telecom operator providing affordable access for education, health, and empowerment, with particular emphasis on connectivity challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. Josef Noll opened the discussion by highlighting that while 75% of people in sub-Saharan Africa remain unconnected, the coverage gap is only 15%, but the usage gap is a significant 59%, indicating that many people have access to mobile broadband but don’t use it.

Claire Sibthorpe from GSMA Mobile for Development explained that the biggest barriers to mobile technology adoption include lack of affordability, digital literacy and skills, relevant content and services, and safety concerns. She emphasized that unconnected populations are disproportionately rural women, poor communities, those with lower education, and persons with disabilities. Sudhir Dixit from IEEE discussed the organization’s Rural Communication Standards Activities Program, which evaluates proposals for rural broadband infrastructure standards, noting that standards are crucial for manufacturers to justify investment in products.

George Pereira from the EU Commission outlined Europe’s 5G action plan and digital compass initiatives, including 5G corridors for cross-border connectivity and 5G communities focusing on strategic development entities like schools and hospitals. Representatives from Tanzania and Ethiopia described their respective connectivity challenges, with Tanzania experiencing significant infrastructure investment costs and Ethiopia facing similar rural connectivity issues requiring multi-stakeholder approaches.

The session concluded with Vodacom Tanzania Foundation receiving recognition for their work connecting over 250 schools across Tanzania at approximately $22 per school for unlimited 10 Mbps connectivity. This initiative demonstrates how public-private partnerships and community-driven approaches can successfully bridge the digital divide in underserved areas.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **The Digital Divide Challenge**: The session highlighted the significant connectivity gap in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 75% of people remain unconnected. While the coverage gap is relatively small at 15%, the usage gap is much larger at 59%, indicating that many people have potential access to mobile broadband but don’t use it due to barriers like affordability, digital literacy, and lack of relevant content.

– **Multi-stakeholder Collaboration for Connectivity**: The discussion emphasized the critical importance of partnerships between various organizations (GSMA, IEEE, EU Commission, Internet Society, telecom operators, universities, and development agencies) to address connectivity challenges. The collaborative approach involves connecting schools and communities through research networks and community learning labs.

– **Standards and Infrastructure Development**: IEEE’s role in developing rural communication standards was highlighted, including the Rural Communication Standards Activities Program that evaluates proposals for new standards. The discussion covered how standards are essential for manufacturers to build products at scale and for successful infrastructure deployment.

– **Policy Frameworks and Investment Challenges**: Speakers addressed the need for supportive policy environments, including tax breaks, universal service funds, and public-private partnerships. The high cost of infrastructure investment, particularly in rural areas where return on investment is challenging, was identified as a major barrier requiring innovative financing models.

– **Practical Success Stories and Scalability**: The session showcased Vodacom Tanzania’s achievement in connecting 250 schools at an affordable rate of $22 for unlimited 10 Mbps connectivity, demonstrating that affordable access is possible. The discussion emphasized the need for digital literacy training, local ownership, and community engagement for sustainable scaling.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to present an award to the first telecom operator providing affordable access for education, health, and empowerment, while exploring strategies and collaborative approaches to bridge the digital divide in Africa. The session sought to share best practices, identify challenges, and promote partnerships that can scale affordable connectivity solutions.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a consistently positive and collaborative tone throughout. Speakers were enthusiastic about partnerships and shared achievements, while also being realistic about challenges. The tone was professional yet optimistic, with participants expressing genuine commitment to addressing digital inequality. The atmosphere remained constructive and solution-focused, with speakers building on each other’s points and emphasizing the importance of working together to achieve meaningful connectivity for underserved communities.

Speakers

– **Josef Noll** – Session moderator, works with Basic Internet Foundation on school connectivity projects

– **Clair Sibthorpe** – Co-founder of M4D (Mobile for Development), works on digital inclusion and gender in the mobile development department at GSMA

– **Sudhir Dixit** – IEEE Connecting the Unconnected, works on standardization of technologies for rural communication at IEEE Standards Association

– **Josh Perrera** – EU Commission, responsible for DG Connect, 5G, 6G connectivity initiatives

– **Nazar Nicholas** – Dr. Nazar Nicholas Kirama, works for Internet Society, Community Networks Champion in Tanzania

– **Asrat Mulatu** – Internet Society Ethiopia

– **Asim Adeel** – Program coordinator at GIZ (German Development Corporation), works on digital solutions and infrastructure

– **Suveina Farah** – Vodacom Foundation Tanzania, guest of honor

– **Catherine Kimbambo** – Online moderator, works with African Child Program

– **Audience** – Barack Cotiano, chairs the association of community networks in Kenya, partners with Basic Internet Foundation

**Additional speakers:**

– **Claire Sittop** – GSMA Mobile for Development (mentioned in introduction but appears to be the same person as Clair Sibthorpe)

– **George Pereira** – EU Commission responsible for DG Connect, 5G, 6G (mentioned in introduction, appears to be the same person as Josh Perrera)

– **Nicholas Nazar** – Internet Society Tanzania (mentioned in introduction, appears to be the same person as Nazar Nicholas)

– **Jonathan Moringani** – Basic Internet Foundation, rapporteur (mentioned in introduction but did not speak)

– **n.n. from GIZ** – Representative from GIZ (mentioned in introduction, appears to be Asim Adeel)

# Comprehensive Summary: IGF Session on Affordable Access for Education, Health, and Empowerment

## Introduction and Context

This Internet Governance Forum (IGF) session 2-3, moderated by Josef Noll from the Basic Internet Foundation, was specifically focused on presenting an award to the first telecom operator providing affordable access for education, health, and empowerment. The discussion brought together representatives from major international organisations, including GSMA, IEEE, the EU Commission, Internet Society, and various development agencies, to address connectivity challenges in sub-Saharan Africa and explore collaborative solutions for bridging the digital divide.

Catherine Kimambo served as online moderator and Jonathan Moringani as rapporteur for the session, which maintained a collaborative and celebratory tone throughout as participants shared experiences and recognised concrete achievements in connectivity provision.

The session opened with a stark statistic that framed the entire discussion: whilst 75% of people in sub-Saharan Africa remain unconnected, the coverage gap represents only 15% of the population, whilst the usage gap accounts for a significant 59%. This fundamental insight established that the primary challenge is not merely about building infrastructure, but rather about enabling people to use existing connectivity options effectively.

## The Digital Divide: Understanding the Usage Gap

Josef Noll’s opening remarks highlighted the critical distinction between coverage and usage gaps, explaining his methodology of working with universities to build research and education networks, enabling universities to connect, getting students to connect schools, and building community learning and living labs. He mentioned achieving coverage of “20 to 25 kilometre” through this approach.

Claire Sibthorpe from GSMA Mobile for Development expanded on this theme, explaining that the biggest barriers to mobile technology adoption include lack of affordability, digital literacy and skills, relevant content and services, and safety concerns. She emphasised that unconnected populations are disproportionately rural women, poor communities, those with lower education levels, and persons with disabilities.

## Standards and Technology Development

Sudhir Dixit from IEEE brought a crucial perspective on the role of standardisation in scaling connectivity solutions. He outlined IEEE’s Rural Communication Standards Activities Program, which evaluates proposals for rural broadband infrastructure standards. His key insight was that “without standards, no manufacturer will build products because they are looking for volume to justify investment in any manufacturing process.”

Dixit explained that out of 15 proposals received, only one was selected for standardisation – the P1962 project focusing on utilising solar panels as optical communication receivers for rural broadband infrastructure, with a kickoff meeting scheduled for 1st of July 2025.

## European Connectivity Initiatives

George Pereira from the EU Commission outlined Europe’s comprehensive approach to connectivity through the 5G action plan launched in 2016 and the digital compass initiative from 2021, which targets 5G coverage everywhere by 2030. He described two key components: 5G corridors for cross-border connectivity and 5G communities focusing on strategic development entities such as schools, hospitals, and emergency services.

Pereira acknowledged that whilst Europe has made significant progress in urban connectivity, “the challenge remains in return on investment for sparsely populated rural areas.” The European approach of focusing on anchor institutions like schools and hospitals as connectivity hubs offered a strategic framework that resonated with other speakers’ experiences in African contexts.

## African Perspectives: Tanzania and Ethiopia

Nazar Nicholas from Internet Society Tanzania painted a vivid picture of the connectivity landscape, explaining that “as you move maybe like 15, 20, 30 kilometres away from the commercial capital, you start experiencing, instead of 5G, you start experiencing 3G, 2G and sometimes no G.”

Nicholas highlighted that infrastructure costs are extremely high, making investment difficult for telecom operators in rural areas. However, he also noted positive developments, including Tanzania’s regulatory frameworks that accept smaller operators and the digital economy framework for 2024-2034, which recognises the importance of rural connectivity.

Asrat Mulatu from Internet Society Ethiopia described similar challenges, noting that most of Ethiopia’s population lives in rural areas facing under-connectivity issues. He emphasised the need for a multi-stakeholder approach that aligns policies, showcases impact, and mobilises mixed funding mechanisms. The Ethiopian Communications Authority is creating supportive policies including tax breaks, universal service funds, and public-private partnerships.

## The Success Story: Vodacom Tanzania Foundation

The session’s centrepiece was the recognition of Vodacom Tanzania Foundation’s achievement in connecting over 250 schools across Tanzania. Suveina Farah, representing the foundation, provided specific details about their success: connecting schools at a cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings (approximately $22) for unlimited 10 Mbps connectivity.

Farah explained that the foundation, with its 20-year history and impact on 10 million lives, provided comprehensive support including ICT hardware, computer labs, tablets, and routers. The initiative involved deploying 700 towers in rural areas through the Digital Tanzania Project and zero-rating the Tanzania Institute of Education platform with 184 centers.

However, Farah also acknowledged ongoing challenges, including significant hurdles with energy and power in rural areas, accessible roads for tower maintenance, and low smartphone penetration that limits usage despite improved access. The foundation’s response included shifting focus to digital skills and teacher training to address gaps in digital literacy.

## Community Networks and Development Perspectives

Barack Cotiano, representing the association of community networks in Kenya, brought important insights about evidence-based research and community-driven approaches. He emphasised that “evidence-based research is key” and noted that approximately 70% of sub-Saharan Africa lacks meaningful access and still uses 2G technology whilst the Global North has moved beyond 2G.

Asim Adeel from GIZ (German Development Corporation) outlined his organisation’s approach to supporting digital solutions, emphasising principles of local ownership, scalability, gender inclusion, and cross-sector partnerships. This development perspective reinforced the importance of community-driven approaches and highlighted the need to address gender disparities in digital access.

## Key Themes and Approaches

Throughout the discussion, several important themes emerged:

**Multi-stakeholder Collaboration**: Speakers consistently emphasised the importance of partnerships between governments, private sector, civil society, and communities. The success of the Tanzania initiative demonstrated how telecommunications operators, educational institutions, government agencies, and development organisations can work together effectively.

**Digital Literacy and Capacity Building**: Multiple speakers agreed that providing connectivity infrastructure alone is insufficient. Suveina Farah’s description of Vodacom Foundation’s shift towards digital skills and teacher training exemplified the understanding that capacity building must accompany infrastructure development.

**Rural Connectivity Challenges**: Speakers consistently identified rural areas as facing the greatest connectivity challenges due to infrastructure limitations, investment barriers, and geographic obstacles. The high cost of infrastructure investment, particularly in areas where return on investment is uncertain, emerged as a persistent barrier requiring innovative financing models.

**Anchor Institution Strategy**: The focus on schools, hospitals, and emergency services as anchor points for connectivity initiatives provided a strategic framework that appeared across multiple speakers’ presentations, from the EU’s approach to the Tanzania success story.

## Practical Implementation and Innovation

The discussion provided concrete evidence of successful implementation through specific metrics and approaches. The Vodacom Tanzania Foundation’s model offered a tangible benchmark – 250 schools connected at $22 per school for 10 Mbps unlimited data – demonstrating that affordable connectivity is achievable at scale.

The session also touched on innovative technical approaches, including the IEEE project on utilising solar panels as optical communication receivers, which addresses both connectivity and power challenges simultaneously. The emphasis on evidence-based research and measurement tools demonstrated the importance of systematic approaches to identifying connectivity gaps and measuring impact.

## Award Recognition and Symbolic Importance

The session concluded with the symbolic presentation of an award to Vodacom Tanzania Foundation, recognising their achievement as the first telecom operator to provide affordable access for education, health, and empowerment at scale. Catherine Kimambo was designated to hand-carry the award to Tanzania, emphasising the personal and collaborative nature of the recognition.

This award presentation served multiple purposes: acknowledging concrete achievement, providing a model for other operators to emulate, and creating momentum for similar initiatives across the region. The recognition highlighted the importance of celebrating success and peer learning in scaling effective approaches.

## Conclusion

This IGF session successfully demonstrated that affordable connectivity for education, health, and empowerment is achievable through collaborative approaches that address multiple dimensions of the digital divide simultaneously. The Vodacom Tanzania Foundation’s success in connecting 250 schools at $22 per school provided concrete evidence that innovative partnerships and creative approaches can overcome traditional barriers to rural connectivity.

The session’s collaborative tone and focus on practical solutions highlighted the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships, evidence-based approaches, and comprehensive strategies that address infrastructure, affordability, digital literacy, and capacity building together. The recognition of Vodacom Tanzania Foundation serves not only as acknowledgement of their achievement but also as encouragement for other organisations to pursue similar initiatives.

The discussion demonstrated that while challenges remain – including rural infrastructure costs, device affordability, and digital literacy gaps – successful models exist and can provide blueprints for scaling affordable connectivity initiatives across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Josef Noll: Good morning everyone and welcome to the IGF session 2-3 on the award for the first telecom operator, for the first operator giving us affordable access for education, health and empowerment. And I’m very, very glad to have with me Claire Sittop from the GSMA Mobile for Development, Sudhir Dixit from the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected, George Pereira from the EU Commission responsible for DG Connect, 5G, 6G and whatever is coming up, Nicholas Nazar from the Internet Society in Tanzania, Asrat Mulatu from the Internet Society in Ethiopia, Suveina Farah, our guest of honour from the Vodacom Foundation in Tanzania and n.n. from the GIZ. Our online moderator is Catherine Kimambo here on my side and our rapporteur is Jonathan Moringani from the Basic Internet Foundation. So the way we organise the session is that we see that connectivity is still the challenge number one. What we’ve done in the past is, sorry next slide please, we have the collaboration with GSMA to actually address the challenge of Africa, South of Sahara, 75% of people basically being unconnected and out of that the coverage gap is rather small, 15%, but the usage gap is a lot, lot bigger, 59%. 59% don’t use these. and others. We have a lot of people who are interested in using the mobile broadband, though they would have the chance to use it. And that has been the question for us, what can we do in the future? And based on the experience of having connected 250 schools, next slide, we follow an approach of where we say, we work together with universities and universities, we build a research and education network, enable universities to connect, and get our students to go out to connect schools, and together with the operators, we then build, connect the schools, and build the community learning and living labs. These are basically the takeaways, and with the next slide, I then just show you the practical story, some of our mobiles are interfering, sorry for that, how we work with the community. And you see, like, Catherine, with one of our installations at the schools, reaching 20 to 25 kilometre. Without any further delay, I will then open up the floor for Claire, our collaboration partner at GSMA, please, Claire, can you tell us a bit more about M4D and the things you are doing?

Clair Sibthorpe: So, I’m Claire, and I’m the co-founder of M4D, and I think you can tell us a bit more about M4D and the things you are doing. Inclusion, and gender in the mobile development department at GSMA, and we are very much looking at trying how we can help with three primary things, so that people, almost all folks that they work with have access to mobile technology to meet their life needs, and as you highlighted, there is a coverage gap and also a big usage gap and in our research we are seeing that the biggest challenge is in terms of being able to use it, is lack of affordable, affordable technologies. Thank you very much for joining us for this session on Internet of Things. We’ve heard a lot about digital handsets and devices, literacy and skills, but there’s also issues around lack of relevant content and services, safety and security concerns. And so I think, you know, taking a holistic approach to both improving affordability skills, improving safety and security and ensuring relevant content is really needed that there is a not-be-left-behind in this, you know, our increasingly digital world. So I think the sort of collaboration, the kind of collaboration that you’ve been doing and talking about is absolutely critical if we’re going to address this sort of multitude of issues. And those who are unconnected are disproportionately rural women, poor communities, lower education and persons with disabilities. So we really need to be focusing on specifically these segments if we’re going to ensure that they’re not being left behind. So thank you very much for the partnership and for the initiative that you’re doing.

Josef Noll: Oh, thanks so much, Claire. That was a short, fantastic introduction. And so without any further delay, Sudhir Dixit from the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected. Can you give us the pathway from standards? What is IEEE helping us to connect every single human on this earth?

Sudhir Dixit: Thank you very much, Joseph. Good morning to all of you. My name is Sudhir Dixit. I don’t have much time. So basically I’d like to talk about what IEEE is doing as far as the standardization of technologies for rural communication is concerned. So some of you may know that IEEE is a member-driven organization which has about half a million members around the world. IEEE stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It has many different divisions, and one of the divisions is Standards Association. And in the Standards Association, there is an organization called New Standards Committee. So any new standards that people would like to propose, they come to this committee. And in this committee, there is something called Rapid Reaction Standardization Activities Process, whereby every idea that is submitted, it gets considered in a very short time, and it goes to project authorization request phase, where it goes into the study group to be made standard. So what happens is that there is something called Rural Communication Standards Activities Program within this New Standards Committee. So all the proposals that come here, they get considered, as I said before. And there are four goals of this Rural Communication Interconnect Program. One of them is to study socioeconomic and regulatory issues related to rural broadband. The other one is to study existing rural broadband infrastructure. Third one is to study normal broadband architecture from 6G perspective. And fourth is to propose new standards. So just to give an example, this is a new body within the New Standards Committee. About a year ago, we had 15 proposals that were considered by Rural Communication Standards Activities Committee. Out of those 15, which came from around the world, five of them, they never showed up during the meeting. So 10 were evaluated, and they were discussed. and out of those ten, one was selected to move forward, to project authorization phase. And out of that, and that was made into a project that is called P1962 project. So this is the only project that is going forward for standardization within the… As far as the rural broadband infrastructure, by utilizing solar panels as optical communication receivers. So the idea is that people have these solar panels at home, and they will act like receivers of optical signals directly wherever they may be coming from. So that has been considered to go forward for standardization by the IEEE Standards Committee. And that was approved only recently, about a month ago. And the kickoff meeting of this study group is going to take place on 1st of July 2025. So in summary, what I would like to say is that anybody as an individual or an organization is free to submit their idea or a proposal for potential standardization to be called a standard by IEEE. And I would also like to mention that many of us think that technology is the success, but that is really not true. to be successful, you need to have the technology of course, you need to know what the user needs are, what the market needs are, and there have to be standards in place. Without standards, no manufacturer will build products because they are looking for volume to justify investment in any manufacturing process. So standards are a very important part of the overall process to have an infrastructure that will be deployed at a larger scale. So with that, I’ll stop here.

Josef Noll: Thank you so much, Sudhir, and of course, without standards, we wouldn’t have Wi-Fi, we wouldn’t have connectivity, we wouldn’t be anywhere. So from that one, I give the floor over to Xoxo Pereira. Xoxo, you are driving with 5G, 6G connectivity all around Europe and the world. Give us your take on connecting the unconnected.

Josh Perrera: Good morning, everyone. My apologies for not being there. Thanks, Josef, for the kind invitation. I don’t know if I have time to present my slides, but indeed, as Josef has mentioned, we have been for a long time trying to provide an ensure coverage for all in Europe. This is not easy, and this is not straightforward, because as it was already mentioned by Sudhir, the issue is that there are market interests that make it that return on investment is not guaranteed, namely for the rural areas that Sudhir mentioned. So in the context of our programs, we have defined, first of all, the so-called 5G action plan. that aimed at providing access to everyone, everywhere, not only in the major cities, but also across the major transport paths in Europe. And this was done already in 2016. This was later expanded in the digital compass of 2021 to make sure that there would be effectively 5G everywhere by 2030. So this is now much more precise, and a taxing objective. But it’s not only the issue of coverage. It’s also the types of services that people will be able to receive. We have addressed this in two main areas. In order to cover the main transport paths in Europe, we have launched an activity called 5G corridors for cross-border connectivity, because it is important that the fact that you move from one country to the other, that you do not lose services. And especially for those people living near the borders, this is a major issue. And the other activity is centers around the so-called 5G communities. This started initially as the so-called project Wi-Fi for All, which provided grants for remote communities to be able to provide service to the local community, focusing around the so-called strategic development entities, which are schools, hospitals, but also the firefighters, the police, ambulances, libraries. So this type of community… community services are the main targets of these 5G communities. So, we went from Wi-Fi for all to 5G for all in these communities. And this represents a significant investment that is still going on with the objective of providing gigabit connectivity for all households in Europe, which is a big undertaking. All means really covering not only the major conurbations, but even all remote outlets across rural areas. And the second one is to ensure this delivery of advanced services. And it’s not only education and health, but it’s also safety, public protection and these activities that are again mostly in rural areas that have to do with smart agriculture. The objective being of really promoting these advanced services and addressing the digital divide to make sure that people can really have the full benefits of this connectivity. There are still many challenges ahead. It’s not only ensuring proper coverage, as I said, return on investment. It does not make this attractive for these sparsely populated areas. But really providing these advanced services to these smaller communities is again a challenge. So, what are the costs? Who is going to cover this? All of this makes it difficult. But one major, I would say, and critical aspect is the actual involvement of communities. Because what I mentioned before, the 5G corridors and the 5G communities, usually involve municipalities to provide these services, to provide the connectivity in the last mile. But in many areas, if you’re talking about an isolated farm or things like this, we are not talking about municipalities. How can the community, how can the individuals really get involved in all of this and have the full benefits? With this, I give the floor back to Josef. Thanks.

Josef Noll: Thanks, George, for the insights of the 5G for all and the community driven. And I think that brings us directly over to you, Nazar, right? Because Tanzania is community driven. What is your take?

Nazar Nicholas: Thank you, Josef, for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Dr. Nazar Nicholas Kirama and I currently work for the Internet Society. And I am also the Community Networks Champion, advocating for connectivity in Tanzania. I think one of the things that we need to realize is that there is an issue of investment for the shareholders and also there is an issue of digital divide in rural and urban Tanzania. And the number of telecom dark areas in Tanzania is still very high because of the issues of investment on infrastructure. And this exacerbates the number of people who are still not… and a lot of people who are here are connected to the Internet. And the reality on the ground is, for example, if you are in Dar es Salaam, the commercial city of Tanzania, as you move maybe like 15, 20, 30 kilometers away from the commercial capital, you start experiencing, instead of 5G, you start experiencing 3G, 2G and sometimes no G. And the issue is about really, like I’ve said, is about the cost of investment. The infrastructure is very high. There is an issue of also even in those areas where people are connected, the Internet is still very unreliable. And also we have another issue in there of digital literacy. We have to really understand that the infrastructure is very expensive. Much as we would like the telecom operators to be everywhere, the issue is really investment in infrastructure. I wanted to highlight one of the impacts that we have been working together with Joseph and Basic Internet Foundation to connect. We are able to connect schools using a very simple basic equipment. And the appeal is for those who believe in a holistic approach to the Africa digital. thank you very much.

Josef Noll: Oh, thanks so much, Nassar. And I think the views that you had from Tanzania, that is the views which might be slightly different in Ethiopia. So, Azrat, could you tell us what the situation is in Ethiopia?

Asrat Mulatu: Okay, good morning, everyone. And thank you, Joseph, for inviting me and raising this very critical question. So, the issue of this, you know, attracting and scaling up stakeholders’ involvement in providing affordable connectivity for schools, health stations, and communities needing a multi-point strategy, because that’s very critical. So, because everyone has its own interest. So, one of the key points would be, you know, policy initiatives and regulatory frameworks. So, in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Communications Authority, ECA, is, you know, creating these policies, like through tax breaks, universal service fund, which they are already finalizing the framework, and the public-private partnerships, which are very critical. So, this could have, you know, give a sales connectivity business case for ICBC and other stakeholders. Beside that, the second critical point is, we have to demonstrate, you know, projects and pilots in these underserved areas. as a proof of concept so that they can see tangible social impacts, which is another very critical point. From the third point, we can have some kind of financial models, blended financial models, that can de-risk investments for ISPs and other multi-stakeholder interest groups can chip in as we go. The other one is very important, local ownership and demand generation. We have to engage local administrations, school admins and community associations early in the process so that we have local buy-ins and sustainability, which is very important. In the long term, it will bring new demands for services as they enjoy the different aspects of it. Then, maybe the last point, we can have data-driven advocacy, because one of the problems I have seen in Ethiopia is lack of awareness of what such initiatives could bring to the local community in several areas. We have to demonstrate the reason for investment, which is very important, and what kind of social value of connectivity it can bring. This needs evidence-based arguments, empirical evidence, so that we can build political confidence, which is one of the challenges here in Ethiopia. The other one is to build financial momentum so that we can expand the pilot to other places. As a summary, this issue is very critical, especially in Ethiopia. We are under-connected in many places. Only connectivity is in rural areas. That is the biggest challenge in Ethiopia. Much of the population is not living in urban areas, unfortunately. This needs to scale up. with a stakeholder approach, aligning policies, showcasing impact, and mobilizing mixed funding mechanisms so that we can build grassroots ownership along the way. So, Ethiopia is growing in digital momentum, as you can see, in many aspects, so this might, you know, piggyback on these advancements and efforts so that smart inclusive engagement is brought. So, these are the facts in Ethiopia. Thank you, Josef.

Josef Noll: Thank you so much, Asrat. And we talked so much about digital public infrastructures here at the IGF, and of course, Asim, you from GIZ, you are heavily involved in all these discussions on policies. Could you give us your contribution or your take from the GIZ in this area of connectivity and infrastructures and so on? Thank you, Josef. And first of all, thank you

Asim Adeel: for having me on this panel. And you know that I’m a fan of your work. I totally believe that access to quality education and healthcare is not only a privilege, but it’s kind of a fundamental right. It’s a fundamental human right. Yet, across many parts of the world, we totally see that, and especially in Africa, these essential services still remain out of the reach of millions of people due to the high costs, infrastructure gaps, and geographic barriers. This is where the concept of affordable access for education and health becomes crucial. It really focuses on breaking down these barriers by leveraging inclusive, low-cost solutions. Yes, at the forefront of GIZ, the German Development Corporation, which is supporting our partners’ countries to harness Championships in Digital Culture. Hello everybody, again I’m Inayat Olaby. I’m program coordinator at G Motor media-technology. I will be conveying Martin malt Some media technologies such as digital solutions, such as those are covered with the offices to provide access to communities and our major platform which is already providing services for millions global We have learned to apply for to the multilanguage fixtures which aligned with the local needs and national standards. not only this, but in healthcare, sports for eHealth and mHealth including mobile apps and digital partnership that also advances on the to building cross-border digital infrastructure that supports not just health but also broader digital solutions. are very essential for GIZ work. and sport ministries of education and learning into national strategies. ensure not just innovation, but Also in general to interoperability as part of our rise in climate change. These collaborations ensure not just with the national policies. program to cofinally with private sectors for the innovations that promote affordable access to essential services. I’m sorry, my throat is a little bit dry, so I will keep drinking. For example, the startups and companies receive support to develop scalable solutions under this DEVELOPPP program. GIZ’s work is guided with a couple of principles, which are some of them I would like to highlight. Let’s say the local ownership. We totally believe that the programs are co-designed and with the local governments and communities for long-term impact. And other of the things which we really consider is scalability. That the initiatives start small, but are designed for the national and regional scale-up. Gender inclusion, a special focus for the women and the young for the marginalized groups. Cross-sector partnership, like with the civil society, startups, as well as with the multilateral cooperation. With these examples, I would just like to conclude here my discussion and I would say that the affordable access for education and health is more than a development objective. It is a commitment to dignity, equity and opportunity. With digital tools, strong partnerships and community-driven solutions, GIZ is really helping to ensure that no one is really left behind. Thank you.

Josef Noll: Thank you so much, Asim. Your commitment to dignity and the point out to the opportunities. Sveina, we worked together for the last, I don’t know, three, four, five years, and we went through many downgrades, but at the end of the day, I see really the highlights. So I’m very pleased to have you as the guest event owner. We didn’t get you over here yet, but we’ll do it symbolically afterwards. So please tell us about the journey and your commitment from Vodacom Tanzania to launch the Affordable Access. Thank you so much, Josef, and thank you for

Suveina Farah: having me. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t be there with everyone in Norway, but happy to be able to join online. That’s the power of technology nowadays. But in a nutshell, I just wanted to highlight with regards to our work as Vodacom Tanzania Foundation. First and foremost, we believe in the power of partnerships, and that in itself speaks volumes of what we have been able to do for the last 20 years. This year, the foundation turns 20 years, and we’ve been able to improve more than 10 lives across health, education, as well as economic empowerment. And this is purely because we believe in the power of technology and connecting people to a better future. But if I may, I’d like to touch on some of the work that we’ve worked on when it comes to affordable access, as well as connectivity in the education sector. In the past, we’ve been able to provide and connect more than 250 schools across Tanzania, providing ICT hardware, building computer labs, as well as tablets and routers, so that the schools can be connected to the internet, but also they can access thousands of materials and resources for the students and educators, as well as provide affordable and reliable internet to them all. This has enabled access to digital learning materials and platforms that have improved education outcomes. Our recent impact assessment shows that there has been considerable improvement, significant improvement in educational outcomes in the schools that we work with. have supported. But over and beyond that, we’ve also understood that there are gaps, and most of them are a result of digital literacy, specifically on the teacher training side of things. And the last two years, we’ve shifted our focus towards the digital skills and empowering teachers with the right skills and literacy and learning tools to be able to serve the students, but also further communicate to the communities on the importance of that. We’ve expanded school connectivity to underserved and rural areas, and this is through partnership with the likes of our Universal Communication Service Access Fund, as well as the World Bank and the government of Tanzania through the private partnership program that we do have, sorry, public-private partnerships program that we do have called Digital Tanzania Project. And that’s, in the last three years, all telecom operators have been able to deploy more than 700 towers in rural areas to connect. We’ve gone over and above what we have committed, but also we are embarking on a mission to upgrade our network to 4G coverage to ensure that what Dr. Nazar had mentioned, that when someone has 5G coverage in the city, how do we also make sure that or ensure that someone in the rural area has the same access, and not necessarily maybe 5G, but at least 4G and not 2G anymore. We’ve collaborated with many partners, Catherine sitting on the panel there with African Child Program, but as well as recent, we’ve signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tanzania Institute of Education to zero rate their platform, which is a platform that provides resources to teachers in 184 centers. But we’ve also connected all those learning centers to ensure that they do get timely updates on their platforms, as well as scaling affordable internet solutions and maintaining the infrastructure there. Our purpose in general is to drive the digital divide in education and to bridge the digital divide in education and this we do it by ensuring that every student and teacher has the tools and connectivity they need to thrive in a digital world but to also advance Tanzania’s vision of inclusive technology enabled learning for all. On investments on infrastructure with Tanzania as a country, I believe we have been making many strides over the past years. If I look back 10 years to where we are today, there has been significant investment on infrastructure. There are still significant hurdles that we need to cross over everything from energy and power in rural areas all the way to accessible roads so that these infrastructures, these towers can be maintained and ensure that we provide the connectivity that is needed to the citizens and to the public in those areas. But digital literacy has been at the core of what we do and we see significant improvements with regards to the programs that we run. And last but not least, affordability of devices. I believe there’s quite a lot of interventions that we can put in place as telecom operators but as well as government. While there is, where we do enable access, usage is still very low and this is because of the small percentage with regards to smartphone penetration. And nowadays, through smartphones, they can access resources and would also drive further the improvement of educational outcomes but also access to different facilities from multiple sectors. Last but not least, I’d just like to conclude by thanking Joseph and everyone in the room and also insisting that partnerships are key if we want to see the digital world or a thriving digital world that we want in place. Thank you very much, Joseph.

Josef Noll: Thanks, Sevena. And of course, it’s a bit difficult, but we want to really acknowledge the partnership which you brought across. And for this partnership, we have Sudhir from IEEE, we have Claire and Ruth from GSMA, we have Shosh from the EU Commission, and us, and we’d love to symbolically give you this one over to Catherine, who will carry it, hand carry it, to Tanzania. So congratulations to the award. And I hope that your inspiration which you are giving to us here in the room for connecting the 250 schools at a price down to 60,000 Tanzanian shillings for a 10 megabit per second link without data cap, which is about $22 to connect a school with unlimited data. That has really been the game changer in Tanzania, and we really hope that this is scaling up to the whole of Tanzania. Thank you so much. Having said that, if you have a question, this is the time for you to jump in. You have so much expertise here. Please go ahead and bring your questions across. The mic is over there, and the online questions is also here. So while we have one participant going to the mic, then we take one online question, which is, Nassar, that is to you and to you, Savannah, and that is, what are the policy frameworks in Tanzania to actually foster, our

Nazar Nicholas: thank you very much. So, Nye, I want to have you do a presentation on what is in the school connectivity. We can more mobile, I am so having direct internet at a school, you know, that’s very important, that’s very important for any person needing contactDavide the regulator has come up with, you know, the framework to see how they can accept, you know, smaller operators. So, you know, I think it’s very important to recognize the importance of connectivity, especially in the rural areas. So, you know, the Tanzania digital economy framework, 2024, 2034, that one also recognizes the importance of connectivity, especially in the rural areas, if at all, you know, Tanzania and

Catherine Kimbambo: rural areas, and I think thispis officer Vodikonee, thank you outside for relating that much and I can say for now, thanksake the second panel, it addresses why operators engage in such initiatives and what are the potential benefits.

Suveina Farah: For Vodikonee, it is embedded in our purpose, and we are a purpose-led organisation, and our purpose speaks on, one, empowering people, two, protecting the planet, and, three, maintaining trust. and throughout across all our commercial activities purpose is embedded whether it’s through digital inclusion financial inclusion accessibility or ensuring that our actions our activities are not harming the planet and what we do to ensure that there’s restoration and reforestation as well with regards to our activities so that is why that is our why we believe that as a technology company as a telecommunication company we can connect people to a better future on the aspect of what is our what what what is the benefit one is that having increasing digital literacy increasing digital skills we’re seeing an uptake of data services but also on the other end is that to be able to reach people to be able to improve lives we need to be a digital connected world but also access to educational resources actually access to health facilities we’ve worked across these three different pillars of health economic empowerment as well as education and we’re seeing remarkable improvement in all the regions that we work with as well as as well as better improving lives of Tanzanians we believe also that it is our duty as as an investor in the country to ensure that our work improves the lives of the Tanzanians

Josef Noll: thank you thanks and we have uh someone wanted to ask a question from the room please introduce yourself and we only have two and a half minutes left so very short answers please thank you

Audience: thank you very much joseph my name is uh barack cotiano i chair the association of community networks in kenya and i have partnered with basic internet as well in community connectivity in kenya uh some quick points uh first congratulations vodacom tanzania for showing the way and working towards lowering and the Cost for Connectivity. Now quickly, in addition to the issues that have been raised, evidence-based research is key in addressing this particular topic of affordable access for education and health. One of the learnings from the projects that I have done with the Basic Internet Foundation is measurements using the network cell infolight. And this has been key in actually identifying areas that do not have an adequate signal that can provide meaningful access to the community. As we speak, there is still approximately 70% of sub-Saharan Africa that does not have meaningful access and that is still using 2G, while the Global North has already moved out of 2G or some of the countries that are at the sunset phase of 2G. So this is an area that we need to deal with. Secondly is capacity building, targeting the government, targeting civil society, targeting private sector players and academia. We attempted a similar approach in Kenya, we only succeeded with 45 schools because the government said education is free, so why are you talking of charging the schools yet you know very well that we have a policy framework that dictates that education is free. Thirdly is the issue of advocacy, which we are doing here. I’m happy to see Naza from the Internet Society, I’m also a member of the Internet Society chapter and the association and the chapter and many other stakeholders are engaged in advocacy to make sure that we create more awareness in this. Lastly, the definition of meaningful access varies. For instance, right now in Kenya as per the education framework… You have to conclude, we only have 10 seconds left. 10 seconds, yeah. Meaningful access is 50 MB. while in some environments or contexts we are talking about Gigabyte.

Josef Noll: Sorry, that was a long closing remark. I think we covered all the points. If you have more points, I’m very happy that you joined us. Thank you so much. And by this one, I close the session. And again, we are looking forward to have more telecom operators to join us and ISPs on the path for affordable access, for education, health and empowerment. Thank you, everyone. Raise for a picture, I think. Yeah.

Agreement points

Partnerships and collaboration are essential for successful connectivity initiatives

Speakers

– Josef Noll
– Clair Sibthorpe
– Asrat Mulatu
– Asim Adeel
– Suveina Farah

Arguments

Collaboration between universities, operators, and communities to build research networks and connect schools

Biggest challenge for mobile technology usage is lack of affordability, digital literacy, relevant content, and safety concerns

Multi-stakeholder approach aligning policies, showcasing impact, and mobilizing mixed funding mechanisms needed

GIZ supports digital solutions guided by local ownership, scalability, gender inclusion, and cross-sector partnerships

Partnerships are essential for digital transformation and have enabled Vodacom Foundation to improve 10 million lives over 20 years

Summary

All speakers emphasized that addressing connectivity challenges requires collaborative approaches involving multiple stakeholders including governments, private sector, civil society, and communities working together

Topics

Development | Economic | Infrastructure

Rural connectivity faces significant infrastructure and investment challenges

Speakers

– Josh Perrera
– Nazar Nicholas
– Asrat Mulatu
– Suveina Farah

Arguments

Challenge remains in return on investment for sparsely populated rural areas

Rural areas experience degraded connectivity with 3G, 2G or no service just 15-30km from commercial centers

Ethiopia faces under-connectivity challenges with most population living in rural areas

Significant hurdles include energy, power in rural areas, and accessible roads for tower maintenance

Summary

Speakers consistently identified rural areas as facing the greatest connectivity challenges due to infrastructure limitations, investment barriers, and geographic obstacles

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Economic

Digital literacy and capacity building are critical components of connectivity solutions

Speakers

– Clair Sibthorpe
– Asim Adeel
– Suveina Farah
– Audience

Arguments

Biggest challenge for mobile technology usage is lack of affordability, digital literacy, relevant content, and safety concerns

GIZ supports digital solutions guided by local ownership, scalability, gender inclusion, and cross-sector partnerships

Focus shifted to digital skills and teacher training to address gaps in digital literacy

Capacity building targeting government, civil society, private sector and academia is essential

Summary

Multiple speakers agreed that providing connectivity infrastructure alone is insufficient; digital literacy training and capacity building across all stakeholder groups is essential for meaningful access

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Standards and regulatory frameworks are fundamental for scalable connectivity solutions

Speakers

– Sudhir Dixit
– Josh Perrera
– Nazar Nicholas
– Asrat Mulatu

Arguments

Standards are critical for manufacturers to justify investment and build products at scale

EU launched 5G action plan in 2016 and digital compass in 2021 targeting 5G everywhere by 2030

Tanzania has regulatory frameworks accepting smaller operators and digital economy framework 2024-2034 recognizing rural connectivity importance

Ethiopian Communications Authority is creating policies including tax breaks, universal service fund, and public-private partnerships

Summary

Speakers agreed that proper standards and supportive regulatory frameworks are essential foundations for achieving scalable and sustainable connectivity solutions

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the same successful Tanzania school connectivity project, demonstrating practical implementation of affordable connectivity with measurable educational outcomes

Speakers

– Josef Noll
– Suveina Farah

Arguments

Successfully connected 250 schools in Tanzania at cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings ($22) for 10 Mbps unlimited data

Vodacom Tanzania provided ICT hardware, computer labs, tablets and routers to over 250 schools with significant educational outcome improvements

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasized the stark digital divide in connectivity quality, particularly the persistence of outdated 2G technology in rural and underserved areas

Speakers

– Nazar Nicholas
– Audience

Arguments

Rural areas experience degraded connectivity with 3G, 2G or no service just 15-30km from commercial centers

70% of sub-Saharan Africa lacks meaningful access and still uses 2G while Global North has moved beyond 2G

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Both speakers emphasized the importance of targeting essential community services (schools, hospitals, emergency services) as anchor points for connectivity initiatives

Speakers

– Josh Perrera
– Asrat Mulatu

Arguments

5G corridors for cross-border connectivity and 5G communities focusing on schools, hospitals, and emergency services

Multi-stakeholder approach aligning policies, showcasing impact, and mobilizing mixed funding mechanisms needed

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected consensus

Technical innovation in rural connectivity solutions

Speakers

– Sudhir Dixit
– Josef Noll

Arguments

Solar panels can be utilized as optical communication receivers for rural broadband infrastructure

Successfully connected 250 schools in Tanzania at cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings ($22) for 10 Mbps unlimited data

Explanation

The consensus on innovative, low-cost technical solutions was unexpected given the diverse backgrounds of speakers. Both emphasized creative approaches to overcome traditional infrastructure limitations – one through dual-purpose solar panels, another through ultra-affordable connectivity pricing

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Device affordability as a critical barrier beyond connectivity

Speakers

– Clair Sibthorpe
– Suveina Farah

Arguments

Biggest challenge for mobile technology usage is lack of affordability, digital literacy, relevant content, and safety concerns

Low smartphone penetration limits usage despite improved access

Explanation

Unexpected consensus emerged that even when connectivity is available and affordable, device costs remain a significant barrier. Both speakers from different organizations independently identified smartphone affordability as limiting actual usage of available services

Topics

Economic | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus emerged around four main areas: the critical importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships, the particular challenges of rural connectivity, the necessity of digital literacy alongside infrastructure, and the foundational role of standards and regulatory frameworks

Consensus level

High level of consensus with complementary rather than conflicting viewpoints. The agreement suggests a mature understanding of connectivity challenges across different regions and sectors, with implications for coordinated global action on digital inclusion initiatives

Different viewpoints

Primary barriers to connectivity adoption

Speakers

– Josef Noll
– Clair Sibthorpe

Arguments

Coverage gap is 15% but usage gap is much larger at 59% in sub-Saharan Africa

Biggest challenge for mobile technology usage is lack of affordability, digital literacy, relevant content, and safety concerns

Summary

Josef Noll focuses on the usage gap as the primary issue, suggesting infrastructure exists but isn’t being used, while Clair Sibthorpe emphasizes multiple systemic barriers including affordability, digital literacy, content relevance, and safety concerns as the core challenges

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Role of standards versus practical implementation

Speakers

– Sudhir Dixit
– Josef Noll

Arguments

Standards are critical for manufacturers to justify investment and build products at scale

Successfully connected 250 schools in Tanzania at cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings ($22) for 10 Mbps unlimited data

Summary

Sudhir Dixit emphasizes that standards are essential for scalable solutions and manufacturer investment, while Josef Noll demonstrates that practical implementation can succeed with existing technology at very low costs without waiting for new standards

Topics

Infrastructure | Economic | Development

Policy framework effectiveness

Speakers

– Audience
– Nazar Nicholas

Arguments

Kenya’s education policy framework creates challenges as government considers education free, complicating school connectivity initiatives

Tanzania has regulatory frameworks accepting smaller operators and digital economy framework 2024-2034 recognizing rural connectivity importance

Summary

The audience member highlights how policy frameworks can create barriers (Kenya’s free education policy conflicting with connectivity charges), while Nazar Nicholas presents Tanzania’s frameworks as enabling solutions through regulatory acceptance of smaller operators

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural | Development

Unexpected differences

Technology readiness versus immediate implementation

Speakers

– Sudhir Dixit
– Josef Noll

Arguments

Solar panels can be utilized as optical communication receivers for rural broadband infrastructure

Successfully connected 250 schools in Tanzania at cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings ($22) for 10 Mbps unlimited data

Explanation

Unexpectedly, the IEEE representative focused on future innovative technologies (solar panel optical receivers with 2025 kickoff) while the practitioner demonstrated immediate success with existing technology at extremely low costs. This suggests a disconnect between standards development timelines and urgent connectivity needs

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion revealed surprisingly few fundamental disagreements, with most speakers sharing common goals of improving connectivity. Main disagreements centered on prioritization of barriers (infrastructure vs. usage vs. systemic issues), implementation approaches (standards-first vs. practical deployment), and policy effectiveness across different countries

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level with high consensus on goals but different perspectives on methods and priorities. The implications suggest that multiple parallel approaches may be needed rather than a single solution, and that successful models like Tanzania’s should be studied and adapted rather than waiting for perfect standards or policies

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers highlighted the same successful Tanzania school connectivity project, demonstrating practical implementation of affordable connectivity with measurable educational outcomes

Speakers

– Josef Noll
– Suveina Farah

Arguments

Successfully connected 250 schools in Tanzania at cost of 60,000 Tanzanian shillings ($22) for 10 Mbps unlimited data

Vodacom Tanzania provided ICT hardware, computer labs, tablets and routers to over 250 schools with significant educational outcome improvements

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasized the stark digital divide in connectivity quality, particularly the persistence of outdated 2G technology in rural and underserved areas

Speakers

– Nazar Nicholas
– Audience

Arguments

Rural areas experience degraded connectivity with 3G, 2G or no service just 15-30km from commercial centers

70% of sub-Saharan Africa lacks meaningful access and still uses 2G while Global North has moved beyond 2G

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Both speakers emphasized the importance of targeting essential community services (schools, hospitals, emergency services) as anchor points for connectivity initiatives

Speakers

– Josh Perrera
– Asrat Mulatu

Arguments

5G corridors for cross-border connectivity and 5G communities focusing on schools, hospitals, and emergency services

Multi-stakeholder approach aligning policies, showcasing impact, and mobilizing mixed funding mechanisms needed

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Sociocultural

Key takeaways

The digital divide in sub-Saharan Africa is primarily a usage gap (59%) rather than coverage gap (15%), with affordability being the biggest barrier to mobile technology adoption

Successful school connectivity can be achieved at low cost – Tanzania connected 250 schools for $22 per school with 10 Mbps unlimited data

Multi-stakeholder partnerships between universities, telecom operators, governments, and communities are essential for sustainable connectivity solutions

Standards development through organizations like IEEE is critical for manufacturers to justify investment and scale production

Policy frameworks including tax breaks, universal service funds, and public-private partnerships are necessary to make rural connectivity economically viable

Digital literacy and teacher training are as important as infrastructure – focus must shift beyond just providing connectivity to building capacity

Evidence-based research and measurement tools are key to identifying areas lacking adequate connectivity and demonstrating impact

Rural connectivity faces multiple challenges including high infrastructure costs, energy/power issues, poor road access, and low smartphone penetration

Resolutions and action items

Vodacom Tanzania Foundation received symbolic award recognition for their affordable access initiative connecting 250 schools

Catherine Kimambo to hand-carry the award to Tanzania as acknowledgment of the partnership

IEEE P1962 project approved for standardization of rural broadband infrastructure utilizing solar panels as optical communication receivers, with kickoff meeting scheduled for July 1, 2025

Vodacom Tanzania signed memorandum of understanding with Tanzania Institute of Education to zero-rate their platform serving 184 learning centers

Call for more telecom operators and ISPs to join the affordable access initiative for education, health and empowerment

Unresolved issues

How to address the fundamental economic challenge of return on investment for rural connectivity in sparsely populated areas

Varying definitions of ‘meaningful access’ across different countries and contexts (50 MB in Kenya vs Gigabyte requirements elsewhere)

Policy conflicts where governments declare education free but connectivity initiatives require funding mechanisms

How to scale successful pilot projects to national and regional levels sustainably

Addressing the smartphone penetration gap that limits usage even when connectivity is available

How to ensure community involvement and local ownership in isolated areas beyond municipal reach

Suggested compromises

Blended financial models that de-risk investments for ISPs while involving multiple stakeholder interest groups

Starting with small initiatives designed for national and regional scale-up rather than attempting large-scale deployment immediately

Focusing on strategic development entities (schools, hospitals, emergency services) as anchor points for community connectivity

Upgrading networks gradually (ensuring rural areas have at least 4G when cities have 5G, rather than maintaining 2G)

Cross-sector partnerships combining civil society, startups, and multilateral cooperation to share costs and risks

We are seeing that the biggest challenge is in terms of being able to use it, is lack of affordable, affordable technologies… but there’s also issues around lack of relevant content and services, safety and security concerns. And so I think, you know, taking a holistic approach to both improving affordability skills, improving safety and security and ensuring relevant content is really needed

Speaker

Claire Sibthorpe

Reason

This comment reframes the connectivity problem from a purely technical/infrastructure issue to a multifaceted challenge requiring holistic solutions. It introduces the critical insight that access alone isn’t sufficient – usage barriers are equally important and complex.

Impact

This comment established the foundational framework for the entire discussion, shifting focus from just connecting people to ensuring meaningful, sustainable usage. It influenced subsequent speakers to address multiple dimensions of the connectivity challenge rather than focusing solely on technical solutions.

to be successful, you need to have the technology of course, you need to know what the user needs are, what the market needs are, and there have to be standards in place. Without standards, no manufacturer will build products because they are looking for volume to justify investment in any manufacturing process.

Speaker

Sudhir Dixit

Reason

This comment provides a crucial business reality check, explaining why technical solutions alone fail without standardization and market viability. It bridges the gap between idealistic connectivity goals and practical implementation challenges.

Impact

This insight added a layer of economic realism to the discussion, helping other participants understand why connectivity initiatives struggle to scale. It influenced the conversation to consider market dynamics and standardization as essential components of sustainable connectivity solutions.

the issue is really investment in infrastructure. Much as we would like the telecom operators to be everywhere, the issue is really investment in infrastructure… if you are in Dar es Salaam… as you move maybe like 15, 20, 30 kilometers away from the commercial capital, you start experiencing, instead of 5G, you start experiencing 3G, 2G and sometimes no G.

Speaker

Nazar Nicholas

Reason

This comment provides stark, concrete evidence of the digital divide with a vivid example that makes the abstract concept tangible. It challenges assumptions about connectivity progress and highlights the rapid degradation of service quality outside urban centers.

Impact

This ground-truth perspective grounded the discussion in reality, moving it away from theoretical solutions to acknowledge the harsh realities faced by rural communities. It influenced subsequent speakers to address practical implementation challenges and the need for innovative, cost-effective solutions.

We’ve been able to provide and connect more than 250 schools across Tanzania, providing ICT hardware, building computer labs… at a price down to 60,000 Tanzanian shillings for a 10 megabit per second link without data cap, which is about $22 to connect a school with unlimited data.

Speaker

Suveina Farah

Reason

This comment provides concrete proof that affordable connectivity is achievable, offering specific metrics that demonstrate scalable success. It transforms the discussion from theoretical possibilities to documented achievements with measurable impact.

Impact

This comment served as the culminating evidence that the approaches discussed throughout the session can work in practice. It validated the collaborative approach and provided a concrete benchmark for other initiatives, shifting the conversation from ‘whether it’s possible’ to ‘how to replicate and scale’ such successes.

evidence-based research is key… measurements using the network cell infolight… there is still approximately 70% of sub-Saharan Africa that does not have meaningful access and that is still using 2G, while the Global North has already moved out of 2G

Speaker

Barack Cotiano

Reason

This comment introduces the critical importance of data-driven approaches and highlights the stark global digital divide with specific statistics. It emphasizes that meaningful access requires proper measurement and evidence-based interventions.

Impact

Though coming at the end, this comment reinforced the need for systematic, research-based approaches to connectivity challenges and provided sobering statistics that contextualized all previous discussions within the broader global inequality framework.

Overall assessment

These key comments collectively transformed what could have been a superficial discussion about connectivity into a nuanced exploration of systemic challenges and practical solutions. Claire’s holistic framework set the stage for comprehensive analysis, while Sudhir’s business reality check and Nazar’s ground-truth perspective ensured the discussion remained grounded in practical constraints. Suveina’s concrete success story provided hope and validation, while Barack’s evidence-based approach reinforced the need for systematic solutions. Together, these comments created a progression from problem identification through practical constraints to proven solutions, establishing a blueprint for addressing connectivity challenges that balances idealism with realism and theory with practice.

How can we scale up the successful Tanzania model of connecting schools at $22 per school with unlimited data to other countries and regions?

Speaker

Josef Noll

Explanation

This is important because the Tanzania model has proven successful in connecting 250 schools affordably, and scaling this approach could address connectivity gaps across sub-Saharan Africa where 75% remain unconnected

What specific policy frameworks and regulatory mechanisms are needed to incentivize telecom operators to invest in rural connectivity where return on investment is not guaranteed?

Speaker

George Pereira and Asrat Mulatu

Explanation

This addresses the fundamental challenge that market interests don’t align with rural connectivity needs, requiring policy interventions like tax breaks, universal service funds, and public-private partnerships

How can we effectively measure and demonstrate the social impact of connectivity initiatives to build political confidence and financial momentum?

Speaker

Asrat Mulatu

Explanation

Evidence-based arguments and empirical evidence are needed to convince governments and investors of the value of connectivity investments, particularly in underserved areas

What are the most effective approaches to address digital literacy gaps, particularly in teacher training and community education?

Speaker

Suveina Farah and Claire Sibthorpe

Explanation

Digital literacy has been identified as a major barrier to technology adoption, with specific challenges in training educators who can then serve students and communities

How can smartphone penetration be increased in rural areas to enable better access to digital resources and services?

Speaker

Suveina Farah

Explanation

Low smartphone penetration is limiting usage even where connectivity exists, and addressing device affordability is crucial for meaningful access

What constitutes ‘meaningful access’ and how should this definition vary across different contexts and countries?

Speaker

Barack Cotiano

Explanation

There’s inconsistency in defining meaningful access (50 MB in Kenya vs. Gigabyte in other contexts), and standardizing this definition is important for policy and investment decisions

How can community networks and local ownership models be better integrated into national connectivity strategies?

Speaker

George Pereira and Nazar Nicholas

Explanation

Community involvement is critical for sustainability, but there’s a need to understand how to effectively engage communities beyond municipalities, including isolated areas

What evidence-based research methodologies should be used to identify areas lacking adequate signal coverage for meaningful access?

Speaker

Barack Cotiano

Explanation

Proper measurement tools and methodologies are needed to accurately assess connectivity gaps and guide infrastructure investment decisions

How can the IEEE standardization process be leveraged more effectively to develop rural communication technologies?

Speaker

Sudhir Dixit

Explanation

Only 1 out of 15 proposals was selected for standardization, suggesting a need to better understand how to develop viable standards for rural connectivity solutions

Summary

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Norway focused on achieving “net positive digital sustainability,” exploring how digitalization can deliver environmental and societal benefits beyond merely reducing harm. The session was moderated by Natalie Becker Aakervik and featured speakers from Norwegian government agencies, major technology companies like Google and Huawei, infrastructure providers, and international organizations.

Jan Eyvind Velure from the Norwegian Communications Authority introduced the core concept, explaining that net positive sustainability requires balancing the digital “footprint” (negative environmental impacts from infrastructure and devices) against the “handprint” (positive impacts when digital services enable efficiency in other sectors). Norway has conducted a comprehensive lifecycle analysis of its digital infrastructure, finding that digital devices account for 75% of current emissions, though data centers are expected to grow fastest due to AI demands.

Industry representatives presented various approaches to the challenge. Kenneth Frederiksen from Huawei outlined a five-layer framework for measuring green indices across equipment, facilities, networks, operations, and vertical enablement, citing examples where ICT technologies can deliver up to 10 times improvement in other industries. Anton Aschwanden from Google emphasized their commitment to 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 and highlighted AI applications that have already saved millions of tons of emissions through tools like eco-routing in Google Maps.

Jon Gravrak from Bulk Infrastructure advocated for locating data centers near renewable energy sources in northern regions and creating industrial ecosystems that reuse waste heat from data centers. Daniel Dobrygowski from the World Economic Forum stressed the importance of digital trust and multi-stakeholder governance, noting that only 44% of people globally are comfortable with business uses of AI.

Minister Karianne Tung emphasized Norway’s goal to become the world’s most digitalized country by 2030 while maintaining sustainability, announcing upcoming data center strategies that will require heat reuse analysis. The discussion revealed significant challenges, with Pernilla Bergmark from the World Benchmarking Alliance noting that the ICT sector’s emissions have remained stable rather than declining as needed, and that many handprint claims lack rigorous measurement.

The panelists agreed that achieving net positive digital sustainability requires unprecedented collaboration between governments, industry, and civil society, supported by better measurement frameworks, knowledge-based governance, and incentive alignment. The overarching message was that while the challenge is complex, digitalization remains essential for addressing global challenges, requiring careful steering rather than restriction to maximize positive impacts while minimizing environmental costs.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Net Digital Sustainability Framework**: The concept that digitalization should deliver net positive environmental and societal outcomes, not just reduce harm. This involves balancing the “footprint” (negative impacts like energy consumption and emissions) against the “handprint” (positive impacts through enabling other sectors to be more efficient) while accounting for rebound effects.

– **Data Centers and AI’s Growing Energy Demands**: The rapid expansion of AI workloads and data centers is driving significant increases in power consumption. Speakers discussed the need for strategic placement of data centers near renewable energy sources, improved cooling systems, and innovative heat reuse solutions to minimize environmental impact.

– **Measurement and Governance Frameworks**: The critical importance of developing robust, science-based measurement systems to track both footprint and handprint impacts. Norway’s pioneering lifecycle analysis and planned open-source dashboard were highlighted as examples of knowledge-based governance approaches.

– **Multi-stakeholder Collaboration and Trust**: The necessity of cooperation across sectors, borders, and stakeholder groups to achieve sustainable digital transformation. Digital trust was emphasized as fundamental to long-term innovation success, requiring alignment of technology development with human values and expectations.

– **Innovation vs. Regulation Balance**: The challenge of fostering continued technological innovation while implementing appropriate governance structures. Speakers emphasized that sustainability, innovation, and value creation are interconnected rather than competing priorities.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how digitalization can become a net positive force for sustainability and justice, addressing the guiding question: “What kind of governance is needed to ensure digitalization drives net positive sustainability, innovation and value creation?” The session sought to move beyond simply minimizing digital harm to actively creating positive environmental and societal outcomes.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a consistently collaborative and optimistic tone throughout, characterized by solution-oriented thinking and shared commitment to sustainability goals. While speakers acknowledged the significant challenges ahead, the atmosphere remained constructive and forward-looking. There was notable alignment among panelists from different sectors (government, industry, academia, international organizations) on core principles, with healthy debate around implementation approaches rather than fundamental disagreements. The tone became increasingly action-oriented as the session progressed, with concrete examples and commitments being shared.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Natalie Becker Aakervik** – Moderator for the session on sustainable digital growth

– **John Eivind Velure** – Director General of the Norwegian Communications Authority (ENCOM), responsible for digital security, artificial intelligence, and data protection

– **Nicolai Lovdal** – Assistant Director for Digital Sustainability at ENCOM, with 20 years of experience as entrepreneur, researcher, and strategy consultant at the intersection of technology, innovation, and sustainability

– **Kenneth Fredriksen** – Senior Vice President of Huawei Europe region and subsidiary board director for the Nordic and Baltic cluster, with 25 years in the ICT industry

– **Anton Aschwanden** – Head of Google’s Government Affairs and public policy for Switzerland, Austria, and international organizations in Europe, with over 20 years of experience in technology, innovation, and sustainability

– **Jon Gravrak** – CEO of Bulk Infrastructure, a leading provider of digital infrastructure in Norway

– **Daniel Dobrygowski** – Head of Governance and Trust at the World Economic Forum, leads work on trustworthy technology including the Digital Trust Initiative, attorney and educator at Columbia University

– **Pernilla Bergmark** – Research Lead Financial Systems Transformation for the World Benchmarking Alliance, former principal researcher on ICT sustainability at Ericsson

– **Karianne Tung** – Minister of Digitalization and Public Governance of Norway since 2023, leading voice on digital transformation, AI regulation and public sector innovation

**Additional speakers:**

None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.

# Net Positive Digital Sustainability Discussion at Internet Governance Forum Norway

## Executive Summary

This session at the Internet Governance Forum in Norway explored achieving “net positive digital sustainability” – where digitalisation delivers environmental and societal benefits that exceed its negative impacts. Moderated by Natalie Becker Aakervik, the discussion brought together representatives from Norwegian government agencies, technology companies including Google and Huawei, infrastructure providers, and international organisations to examine governance approaches for sustainable digitalisation.

The discussion revealed both opportunities and challenges in achieving net positive outcomes, with strong consensus on the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration and evidence-based governance, while highlighting tensions around regulatory approaches and measurement methodologies.

## Conceptual Framework and Norwegian Leadership

Jan Eyvind Velure from the Norwegian Communications Authority introduced the net positive concept through a simple illustration: “So if you add a handprint, subtract the footprint and adjust for the rebound effect, only then can we know if we achieve a net positive result worth celebrating.” This framework considers three components: footprint (negative environmental impacts), handprint (positive impacts when digital services enable efficiency improvements), and rebound effects (increased usage offsetting efficiency gains).

Nicolai Lovdal, Assistant Director for Digital Sustainability at ENCOM, presented findings from Norway’s comprehensive lifecycle analysis of its digital infrastructure. Norway is the second country in the world to conduct such an assessment, following France. The research revealed that digital devices currently account for 75% of the sector’s emissions, while data centres are expected to experience the fastest growth due to increasing AI demands. Lovdal announced plans to develop an open-source dashboard for measuring digital sustainability impact to share internationally.

## Industry Perspectives

### Technology Companies

Kenneth Fredriksen from Huawei outlined a five-layer framework for measuring green indices and presented statistics showing that ICT technologies can deliver up to 10 times improvement in other industries compared to ICT’s own emissions. He warned against over-regulation, arguing that being too restrictive on footprint reduction could limit handprint opportunities. He referenced how a 2017 “fun fact” about energy consumption from watching Gangnam Style had become outdated, illustrating how quickly efficiency improvements occur.

Anton Aschwanden from Google emphasized their commitment to achieving 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 and highlighted AI applications delivering measurable benefits, such as eco-routing in Google Maps. He noted that AI models are now 100 times more energy efficient than earlier generations while raising concerns about preventing the digital divide from becoming an AI divide.

### Infrastructure Innovation

Jon Gravrak from Bulk Infrastructure advocated for strategic placement of data centres near renewable energy sources and creating industrial ecosystems that reuse waste heat. He made a compelling argument about generational responsibility: “I think our kids, they will not accept that we now build a new industry without making sure we use the energy twice.”

Gravrak proposed treating digital and energy systems as integrated, coining the term “digital energy” and suggesting data centres could provide grid balancing services while their waste heat supports industrial processes.

## Government Strategy and Policy

Minister Karianne Tung outlined Norway’s goal to become the world’s most digitalized country by 2030. She announced several policy measures including:

– A forthcoming data centre strategy requiring heat reuse analysis

– Prohibition of cryptocurrency mining due to energy inefficiency

– Focus on circular economy approaches for device lifecycle management

– Requirements for waste heat reuse

The Minister emphasized the need for regulation that enables rather than restricts innovation.

## International Governance and Trust

Daniel Dobrygowski from the World Economic Forum stressed the importance of digital trust, presenting statistics showing only 44% of people globally are comfortable with business uses of AI. He argued that sustainable innovation requires public acceptance: “History has taught us that we cannot innovate, at least not over the long term, if we lose trust.”

## Critical Assessment of Progress

Pernilla Bergmark from the World Benchmarking Alliance provided a sobering assessment, noting that ICT sector emissions have remained stable rather than declining as required. Only 20% of assessed companies are on track to meet emission targets, and AI-driven companies have increased operational emissions by up to 150%.

Bergmark challenged optimistic handprint narratives, stating that handprints “can also be adding emissions in other sectors,” emphasizing the need for rigorous measurement methodologies that avoid cherry-picking and over-generous extrapolation.

## Key Areas of Agreement and Tension

### Strong Consensus

– Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential across sectors and borders

– Evidence-based policy making requires robust measurement frameworks

– Strategic infrastructure development should prioritize renewable energy integration

– International knowledge sharing and common standards are necessary

### Areas of Disagreement

– **Regulatory approach**: Industry representatives warned against over-regulation limiting innovation, while government officials advocated for specific policy measures

– **Progress assessment**: Contrasting views on current achievements, with some highlighting efficiency improvements while others emphasized concerning emission trends

– **Priority balance**: Tension between immediate footprint reduction versus long-term handprint maximization

## Emerging Solutions

The discussion highlighted several promising approaches:

– Waste heat reuse from data centres for industrial applications

– AI applications for sustainability optimization across sectors

– Open-source measurement tools for international collaboration

– Industrial co-location strategies around data centres

## Unresolved Challenges

Key challenges requiring further work include:

– Developing standardized international measurement methodologies

– Creating proper business incentives for sustainable practices

– Addressing global digital equity with 2.6 billion people still offline

– Building public trust in AI and digital technologies

– Accurately accounting for rebound effects in sustainability calculations

## Conclusions

The discussion demonstrated mature understanding of digital sustainability challenges with broad agreement on solution directions. Achieving net positive digital sustainability requires unprecedented collaboration between governments, industry, and civil society, supported by better measurement frameworks and aligned incentives.

While the path forward is complex, participants agreed that digitalisation remains essential for addressing global challenges. Success requires careful steering to maximize positive impacts while minimizing environmental costs, with continued collaboration and innovation from all stakeholders to ensure digitalisation becomes a force for positive transformation.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: joining us globally, a warm welcome to sustainable digital growth, net negative, net zero, or net positive. I’m Natalie Becker-Arkovic and I’ll be your moderator for this session. It’s so lovely to have you here this morning. Well, this session will explore the concept of net digital sustainability. What is that? Well, that is the idea that digitalization should not only reduce harm, but actively deliver net positive environmental and societal outcomes, redefining how we measure and how we manage a truly sustainable digital transformation. So, digital infrastructure and services are transforming our societies, as we know, from data centers to mobile networks. They are the key drivers of innovation and sustainability, and they have a growing environmental impact that requires really a more responsible approach. Data centers are particularly important in this conversation and in this transformation. Their power consumption has increased sharply and is expected to continue rising, driven by the large AI models and also global demands that we see for connectivity. By aligning infrastructure and governance and accountability with our shared global goals, this session invites really a cross-sectoral dialogue on how digital transformation can become a force for sustainability and for justice. Now, the guiding question, what kind of governance is needed to ensure digitalization drives net positive sustainability, innovation and value creation, will be a core guiding question that we will try and answer during the session. And through keynotes and a panel discussion, we will try and do this. However, what I would like to do first is introduce the people who are going to be framing this session, who are really going to be setting the tone for us and laying the foundations for the conversations that are coming in our panel discussions. I would like to welcome Jan Eyvind Vellure. He’s the Director of the Norwegian Communications Authority, or ENCOM. Two values they have, responsible and bold. And digital sustainability is one of its strategic focus areas. As a leader at ENCOM, he is responsible for digital security, for artificial intelligence, and for data protection. He is also the Director of the Norwegian Communications Authority, intelligence and the regulation of electronic communication in Norway. He will share the stage with Nikolai Lovdal, who is the Assistant Director for Digital Sustainability at ENCOM, and he will be introducing Nikolai, who has 20 years of experience as entrepreneur, researcher, strategy consultant at the intersection of technology and innovation and sustainability. And Jan, Ivan and Nikolai will really, as I said, frame the concept of what net digital sustainability means. And they will present the case of Norway, highlighting Norway’s journey towards developing a data-driven dashboard for sustainable digital governance. So, please join me in welcoming Jan-Ivan Villora to the stage.

John Eivind Velure: Jan-Ivan, the floor is yours. Thank you, Nathalie. Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, good morning and welcome again to day zero of the Internet Governance Forum here in Norway. At ENCOM, and as the Director General, it is my honor to open a session that asks a bold yet responsible question. How can we make sure that the digital wave we are riding becomes a net positive force for people and the planet? First of all, let me try to frame it. So, where do we stand today? The ICT sector alone already accounts for about 2 to 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that share is likely to grow. Science-based targets require us to cut absolute ICT emissions by 45 percent between 2020 and 2030, to stay at the one-and-a-half degree pathway. So, although energy efficiency per bit keeps improving, our absolute footprint still rises, driven in particular by data-hungry AI workloads. So we need digital infrastructure and new technology, of course, because this is powering health, it’s powering education, security and business growth. But as a society, we must also answer how do we shrink that footprint while scaling the handprint, the positive knock-on effects that digitalization can deliver. So what does net positive mean? Allow me to try to frame net digital sustainability with a simple illustration. Showing on the screen on the left block, the footprint, that is, of course, the negative impact of digital infrastructure and devices. Its energy consumption is carbon emitted, its material use and biodiversity lost. And on the other side, the right block, that is the positive impact, its emissions and resources avoided when other sectors use digital services. Smart grids, telemedicine, precision farming, for naming a few. In addition, we also have the rebound effect. When things get more efficient, more cheap, we tend to use more of it, which reduces again the positive handprint effect. So if you add a handprint, subtract the footprint and adjust for the rebound effect, only then can we know if we achieve a net positive result worth celebrating. So governance in this. That is, of course, everything we do to steer the balance. That are the rules, the incentives, the standards, it’s the open data, it’s of course inside companies, between companies, within nations, across borders. So, the guiding question for today is, what kind of governance is needed to ensure that digitalization drives net positive sustainability, innovation and value creation? Of course, to solve this is not a solo project. We need to work together. It spans public and private sector, regulators and innovators, from the north to the south. And that is, of course, precisely the spirit of the Internet Governance Forum. It’s a multi-stakeholder arena, where we can test ideas and build common rulesets. Norway has begun to walk the talk, by measuring our national digital footprint and developing an open data-driven dashboard. To share that journey, I’m pleased to pass the floor to my colleague and Enkom’s Assistant Director within Digital Sustainability, Nikolaj Løvdal, who will take us from concepts to concrete action.

Nicolai Lovdal: Nikolaj, the stage is yours. So, the government of Norway gave us a task. We want you to reduce the footprint and increase the handprint. And while doing so, you should also drive innovation and value creation. Is that possible? Yes, of course it is. We will have a knowledge-based approach to this. And there’s a strong link between sustainability, innovation and value creation. So, how did we start on this task? Well, the first thing we did was to start saying we have to understand the footprint. So, we did a full lifecycle analysis of the entire digital infrastructure of Norway. We also did scenario analysis. towards 2030-2050. We included CO2 emission, energy consumption, use of materials and also nature. The report is not published yet but if you’re super curious, let’s see, there’s a small QR code down there, so if you are able to catch it from where you’re sitting or look at the presentations afterwards, you can already now download a version because we have asked for feedback. It’s super important for us that we agree that this is actually where we stand, so this can become a common reference in Norway. This is also the place I think I want to say, anyone from France here? We want to send a tribute to France because you guys were the first one doing something like this, so we more or less did a copy morph of you. So, going to the findings. The total emission from the digital infrastructure of Norway is pretty much the same as the direct emission from domestic air travel. Another interesting finding was that the digital devices, they account for 75% of the footprint today. But moving forward, we expect the data center segment to grow fastest and have the highest growth on footprint. That’s mainly caused by AI and energy, but I have to also add that in Norway, a bit special case maybe, it’s also because we’re an attractive country because we have access to renewable energy in this country. It was a lot of work to do that analysis. We can’t do that every year, it will be too costly, both for us as a public institution, but also for the companies that were sharing the data, so we need to do this more efficiently. So, moving forward, we will design a new So, moving forward, we will design, build and test a data-driven open source dashboard or index dashboard, maybe more correct. So, we will basically move towards A framework for governing the net biosphere impact from digitalization. So allow me to briefly talk about the most important design principles of this. It should maybe have started with saying it has to add value for us and for all the stakeholders, so especially the companies. First of all, we will gather data as digital as possible. It will be science-based, transparent. It will be of course fully aligned with international metrics like EU and the standards of ITU and stuff that most of you use. It will be modular and open source, and we will consider to publish it as a digital public good. We will, as the next step, so what will we do as the next step? Well, on Footprint it’s quite straightforward. In close collaboration with companies and industry associations, we will simply build this beta version. On the handprint it’s a bit more of a challenge, since the nature of how you measure it is quite different. That’s where true uncertainty and stuff comes in. But we will do a stab and look at how can we actually measure it? How can we do and make sure that we can discuss this in a meaningful way? Because of course we can’t do that in a better way than we do it today. So, I’m going to end by saying we will first build this for Norway, but it’s designed to share. So even if we’re a small team, we really would like to collaborate internationally, especially with the doers. Thank you. Thank you.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you Nikolaj Lovdahl and thank you Jan Eyvind for sharing those wonderful perspectives and also for setting the tone and the foundation so well for the conversations that are to follow in this session. Now our keynote speakers are up next and they’re going to share their points of view on net positive sustainable or rather net positive digital sustainability. They will share those with us in individual presentations and then we’re going to be moving into a panel discussion as well, ladies and gentlemen. So first up I would like to introduce our first keynote speaker. Kenneth has spent all of his 25 long year career in the ICT industry having worked for both or rather European, American and Chinese suppliers. The last 14 years he has spent at Huawei and Huawei Technologies in various leadership positions. He is currently the senior vice president of Huawei Europe region and a subsidiary board of director for the Nordic and the Baltic cluster as well. So he is going to share their point of view on net positive sustainability and they have a special focus on the development of green indices for ICT as outlined in their green management white paper. So without further ado I’d like to give a warm round of applause to Kenneth Frederiksen, the senior vice president for Europe region for Huawei. Please join us on stage. The floor is

Kenneth Fredriksen: yours. A warm round of applause. Thank you. Thank you Natalie and good morning everyone, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests both offline and online. As mentioned I’m basically probably going to outline this topic more from a infrastructure perspective. Huawei is a relatively large infrastructure provider doing an end-to-end portfolio of all kinds of digital infrastructures and as part of our work we have done a green management white paper which is basically addressing how to govern, execute and plan ICT organizations, green targets and ambitions. And one important component of this white paper is as already mentioned, the green indices, trying to address the different impact of the different layers of digital infrastructure, both from a footprint perspective but also from a handprint perspective. And I’ll briefly go through these different layers which we basically have categorized into five layers of infrastructure and also, you know, the final and maybe most important one, which is related to the handprint of ICT infrastructure. So if we look at, basically, you can also address this from a bottom-up approach but also from a top-down approach. But if we start at the bottom, which is basically the basic equipment layer, here you have the impact of the different equipment product components individually. The facility layer is more than the combined site or data center layer of all these different technologies being at a site level, where you also measure the overall site energy efficient level. Then you go one step further, which is the network layer, which is basically measuring the overall energy efficiency of the whole network and then you measure the output of the network in terms of performance and quality. At the operational level, you look at the cross network impact, where basically you measure the impact of data across networks from A to B. And then at the enablement layer, the fifth layer, you look at the impact of introducing ICT technologies into other verticals. So going into a bit more detail, I mean at the site level, a typical site or a data center can look very different or basically it looks unique for every setup. So in order to address the impact of a site or a data center facility, you need to go into the details. of the equipment in the site and you need to analyze both from an energy perspective what kind of energy being used but also how to better optimize the performance of the different components together as a unit. There’s also different features of course you can introduce in order to optimize and to improve energy consumption. At the network level you have the energy efficiency index which is basically measuring the energy being used in order to provide a certain number of data traffic and this has been a very typical way of measuring energy or network efficiency but now it’s also very important to include the quality and the performance part into this because by only focusing on efficiency you might compromise quality and performance of the network such as coverage speed of the network which then may have a overall negative impact of the total omission or performance of the network. You need to look at both, you cannot just look at only the energy consumption part on the data traffic but you also need to look at how these measures then impact the quality and the user experience of the network. Then at the operational level you look at the end-to-end traffic of data from basically the consumer back to the data center and vice versa. As an operator of such facilities you have two main areas to focus on. To improve the energy efficiency which is basically looking at how to optimize the performance of the network, the site, the data center level and the different components involved and you can look at how to reduce the emission factors which is basically then for the operators to make sure that you try to use as green energy as possible either from purchasing it or developing your own energy production facilities. And also very importantly is of course the vertical enablement index which is basically the handprint part. How to enable new verticals, new industries to be more green, more sustainable by introducing ICT technologies. This is a simple example of how ICT technologies have been introduced in the mining industry and basically what we see as a more kind of a general finding is that introducing ICT technologies into new verticals have a potential of up to 10 times improvement in those industries compared to the emission created at the ICT industry level which means that in this case as you can see it has an 8.4 times positive net factor of introducing ICT technologies. And in order to achieve this at least Huawei very much encourage continuous dialogues at industry level among the suppliers of course but the industry standard organizations, government authorities, we need to work together in furthering and improving the standardization of these ICT solutions and the requirements of it but also trying to work together to create ecosystems to increase the handprint potential of ICT technologies. Thank you very much.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much Kenneth for your presentation there. Introducing our next keynote speaker Anton Heads Google’s Government Affairs and public policy for Switzerland, Austria, and international organizations in Europe. With over 20 years of experience in technology, innovation, and sustainability, Anton’s focus is on building collaborations, a key word here in the conversations not only for today, but in the coming weeks, collaborations and partnerships across various sectors, whether it’s economy, politics, or civil society, or even academia. He’s also a strong advocate for using artificial intelligence to achieve sustainability goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and he advises BrainForest.Global, which is a non-profit focused on forests, biodiversity, and climate action. Please join me in welcoming Anton Aschwanden. The floor is yours.

Anton Aschwanden: Hello, thank you. Good morning, everyone. So technology and AI are probably among the most powerful tools we have to tackle climate change and building a sustainable future. And yet we know that the challenge is really big. We know that there’s a big challenge on energy questions, and I think addressing this duality is a key task we’re having together. No one can do it alone, not a single company, not a single sector. And that’s why we’re really glad to be here at IGF. We were a strong supporter of the IGF for years, and we’re looking forward to the debates this week. Thanks to the Norwegians as well for bringing us together. And really, this commitment to sustainability begins at our own operations. We’re doing that globally, but also locally, to manage our operations really in a sustainable way. Some of you, I don’t know. they are Norwegians in the crowd. We’re about to deepen our roots here in Norway by building a data center in Schien, which is the capital of the Telemark county. So it’s roughly 100 kilometers from here. So this is a key priority for us to really be sustainable across the globe, but also locally. To reduce emissions, and this is really a key work we’re working on, this is like we matched 100 percent of our global and annual electricity with renewable energy every year since 2017. And our ambition is still as big and even bigger because we’re aiming to operate 24-7 carbon-free energy and achieve net zero across our entire value chain by 2030. So what does that mean? That means that every Google search, every YouTube video you’re going to watch will be running by completely green energy. And we’re making progress. You see it on the slides. 10 of our great regions already achieving 90 percent clean energy, carbon-free. But we have to admit as well, this is a challenging task. You see on the very map above me as well that some regions are still behind. So we need to deepen collaboration, work on technical progress, work together, collaborative spirit as we have here at IGF. So now let’s address the elephant in the room, the energy footprint of AI. We tackle this by really a relentless obsession on efficiency. And this goes on several levels. The first level being our data centers. They are now already like a factor 1. 8 times more efficient than average, and we are delivering 4 times more compute power for the same electricity as we did 5 years ago. And then the next layer is the breakthroughs on the hardware. I don’t know if you heard about the latest TPUs, the Tensor Processing Units, the latest AI chips, and it’s really incredible the progress that has been made over the last years. They’re now like 30 times more efficient than the first generation. And then the next level are the AI models. There we see the same kind of increase of efficiency, now cutting the energy required to train an AI model by a factor of 100. And I think this is really key. As the AI adoption grows, this really radical commitment to efficiency will be more important than ever. So let’s come to the footprint of AI, to the handprint after the footprint. And we really see many, many tools where AI can play a key role. We’ve done a study with BCG that AI can help mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and we’re doing that with tools that empower people. You see one illustration from the transport field eco-routing in Google Maps. We saved 2.7 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 alone, which is the equivalent of taking off the road roughly 630,000 cars per year. Another illustration from the transport field is our project GreenLight, where we can cut emissions together with cities at intersection by up to 10%. Or taking a… an illustration from the energy field, our solar API which supports rooftop solar deployment now available for half a billion buildings across 40 markets. Let me end with an illustration on climate adaption. For years, predicting floods was almost impossible. You only had a warning phase of one or two days and sometimes only a few hours. And now, with improved prediction models, we now manage to warn people up to seven days in advance. So, this is, if you imagine, really impressive, 100 countries, 700 million people, and instead of only giving a warning a few hours before, together with partners like the UN, NGOs, we are able now to warn people up to seven days in advance. Not only saving lives, but livelihoods. So those were just a few illustrations, and I think the crucial point I’m making is that digitization can be a really powerful force for a sustainable planet. I invite you all to also pass at our booth. We’re going to highlight some of the projects I just mentioned, and I’m looking forward to the discussion with my fellow co-panelists today and to your questions. Thank you so much. Anton. Right, ladies and gentlemen, so I hope you enjoyed that presentation.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Our next speaker is Jan Gravrok. He’s the CEO of Bulk Infrastructure. Bulk Infrastructure is a leading provider of digital infrastructure right here in Norway. He is a strong believer in building something bigger than ourselves, and that Norway can play a key role in Europe’s digital and green brain. Now he will share the company’s point of view on digital sustainability with us. with a special focus on how large data centers can support the energy grid with flexibility and how data centers could act as a cornerstone business with local support and value creation. That’s going to be an exciting presentation as well, so I hope you’re looking forward to it. Without further ado, I’d like you to join me in giving a very warm welcome to Jon Gravrock.

Jon Gravrak: Thank you. Hello everyone, good to see you, good morning. So I’m representing Bulk Infrastructure and we are a Nordic-based data center operator and developer and operator, and we also build fiber networks. So I wanted to talk a bit about this today, our planet. And I think we’re definitely going into the digital society, to the data age, but it’s still the humble beginning and we still have an opportunity to make our digital society a truly sustainable one. And I think that’s all about our mission in Bulk. How can we make our digital society sustainable? And our governing thought, looking at this planet, is that we have to think a bit differently. We have to choose the locations of the digital foundation, the data centers, carefully. They should be located next to surplus of renewable energy, because data centers are consuming energy and we need to be careful where we put them. We think we need to look up north. We have abundance of renewable power, both on the European side and on the American side, if you look up north. It’s actually shorter fiber distances to cross the continents the further north you get. The climate is colder. It does reduce the power consumption of our data centers and it can scale for the future, which is important. for those GPUs. In bulk, we try to think like an industrial company. What does it mean to bring an industrial mindset into this digital infrastructure world? Well, first of all, we think you need to think long-term. You have to do things today that will have an effect 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 years ahead of time. And what we’re doing today, that’s based on decisions that were made 10, 15 years ago. So you need to keep that long-term logic with you. Secondly, we think you need to really think about industrial scale. So you cannot only solve digital problems locally. You have to find a bigger role, a bigger scale to make it truly industrial. In bulk, we think that what we do in Norway, making use of the renewable power surplus here should benefit all of Europe. So sometimes we talk about building the European engine room for the digital society. Thirdly, an industrial mindset requires you to think about people and capabilities. Yes, these are the machines that we’re kidding for, but it’s still a people business. You need to bring in those young people, teach them capabilities of the future that can benefit all of us. And I wanted to touch upon two sustainability aspects of what we’re doing. The first one, definitely linking to the electricity or energy system. So if you look at this picture, there’s a data center in the foreground. That’s not only any data center, it’s our latest one, and it’s tailored to fit with generative AI. And it’s already housing the GB200s for the ones interested, which is the latest and greatest of NVIDIA GPU technology. And in the background of this picture, you see another interesting thing, which is Kristiansand transformer station. So this is Norway. biggest transformer station. It handles a lot of the surplus of power production in our part of the world. And I think sustainability is about seeing this energy system in the background together with the digital system in the foreground. We actually talk about digital energy and there’s so many synergies to explore here. I already touched upon the first one which is that location of the data centers matters a lot. It’s easier to transport data through fiber networks than it is to transport power through electric grids. And it’s much more efficient. So you have to think carefully about where you put these large data centers of the future. Secondly, there’s simple things which you’ll have to understand on a local level. How can the data centers, you know, play in sync with the grid? And in Norway it’s so that it is really cold and especially in the winter time. So we spend by far the most energy in the winter as a society. But the data centers, they actually consume most power in the summer because that’s when we need to cool down those servers. So seeing those seasonal synergies and using them to optimize the grid, that’s one example of a synergy. Another one is, as we unfortunately saw in Spain and Portugal this summer, or this spring I should say, as we bring more and more distributed power generation, solar, wind, etc. into the grid system, we create new problems for ourselves. And those problems relate to the frequencies of how the power is distributed. And you need to constantly rebalance those frequencies in the grid. And again, data centers with our backup batteries can contribute to that frequency balancing. It’s another synergy. It’s all about electricity. I also think we need to talk about, sorry, oh, too many slides. We need to talk about building cornerstone businesses. So as data centers, we’re often just flying in, consuming the power and never meeting anyone locally. We think you have to build these data centers together with the local communities. You have to build the future cornerstone businesses like the old industries did before. And on this picture is one example of that. It’s to engage on sustainability initiatives together with the local municipality. This is Vennesla in the South of Norway. And another example I wanted to show is this. We have to take care of our youth. So this is Christopher, our supervisor on connectivity and fiber in the data center business. And he’s teaching these 17-year-old kids that’s studying to become electrical engineers how to think about connectivity in the data centers. And for the ones that didn’t know, the newest AI setups require tens, if not hundreds of thousands of independent fiber connections just to work. So we need that youth to come in, but it’s also part of building a cornerstone business that you give the local youth an opportunity to take part in something which is bigger than themselves. And finally, just to summarize what I say, we need to build an industry around this. We need to have the long-term thinking and the scalable thinking. We need to think about the digital industry as an integrated one with the energy industry. We need to think about digital energy. And as Jensen Huang here says, for countries and regions that have surplus of renewable power, we really need to think about exporting intelligence and not just the raw material of power. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: We’re really looking forward to having all of our keynote speakers in the panel discussion so we can engage and take a deeper dive into this very important conversation. And great to see you, our audience, and again acknowledging our global audience who’s watching from online. So nice to have you here at this presentation. So up next, our next speaker leads the World Economic Forum’s work on trustworthy technology and trusted word that’s coming up a lot in this forum, so important in our day and age that we are in, including the Digital Trust Initiative, the Global Coalition for Digital Safety and Connected Future Initiative. He’s also an attorney and educator, Daniel teaches at Columbia University, and his work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wired, and other publications which I’m sure that our audience is very familiar with. So Daniel will present the World Economic Forum’s point of view on net positive sustainability as we’ve mentioned a core concept and the core of this conversation, with a special request to explore the role of digital trust at a handprint potential of emerging technologies really, he’s going to be focusing on that, and the handprint of emerging technologies with a positive impact in shaping a more sustainable digital future. So we’re going to hear from Daniel now, and I’m going to ask you to give another warm rousing, warm round of applause, our audience, to Daniel Dobrygowski, Head of Governance and Trust at the World Economic Forum. Let’s hear it. Daniel. Excellent.

Daniel Dobrygowski: Thank you very much for that warm introduction, and I truly appreciate the Government of Norway and IGF inviting us out and giving us the opportunity to have this discussion. This is an excellent way, obviously, to start the IGF. In many ways, this theme of sustainability, governance, innovation, trust, highlights some of the key themes of our IGF meeting this week. Digital trust and resilience. on responsible innovation, universal access, and digital rights, and digital cooperation. Today, I wanna talk a little bit about the intersection between those different themes and how innovation, sustainability, governance, and trust are absolutely vital when we’re thinking about new and emerging technologies. So first, let’s talk a little bit about innovation. One of the key innovations we think about, AI, is likely to introduce enormous benefits to individuals and to society as a whole. We stand to become more effective and more efficient in almost every human endeavor, from medicine to communications to the provision of government services. But without clear and effective guardrails for that innovation, there’s a chance that all of this will come at tremendous cost to individuals, to society, and to the planet. Those guardrails and the choices that we make in setting them are what we mean when we talk about good governance. And this is where the forum’s work on digital trust comes in. In order to be trustworthy in the development and deployment of new and emerging technologies, we need to decide collectively about what those guardrails guiding our decisions around technology should look like. What we found is that the base expectation for individuals in determining whether they trust these technologies is whether the development and use of those technologies meets people’s expectations and represents their values. Some values and expectations are, of course, dependent on cultural, national, and other contexts. But some are more widely held, like those set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and some are even more basic than that. People don’t want or expect technology that does them harm. People don’t expect or want technologies that degrade the environment that supports our lives. And looking at those reasons and more, I think we can see that AI doesn’t seem to be measuring up in terms of trust, at least not yet. Here we have research from the firm Edelman and their 2025 trust barometer, and shows that only 44% of people globally are comfortable with business uses of AI. Now this is a bad trajectory. History has taught us that we cannot innovate, at least not over the long term, if we lose trust. That means we need to do better about how we ensure that people’s expectations guide our decisions around technology. This is governance in its most basic sense, developing rules or principles for how we decide how to develop these technologies. And making good decisions is fundamentally a multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary effort. Again, here’s where we wanna talk about digital trust. It’s multi-stakeholder because it takes all actors, nations, companies, civil society, and individuals working together in order to identify what our expectations are in terms of new technologies. And also to define the guardrails for those technologies which we will accept. And it’s interdisciplinary because there’s no one source of trust. It’s systemic and interconnected. And here’s what I mean by that. Looking at the forum’s digital trust model, you can see we need to protect a variety of different issues. We need to have intersections between a variety of different disciplines in order to build trust. All of these areas must interact in order to have trustworthy technology development. And here. to highlight one of the areas that we talk about, sustainability. As we discussed today, we need to ensure that technologies are developed and deployed in a sustainable way. This is a basic expectation that people have of technologies. And as digital technologies increasingly consume resources such as energy, water, a trustworthy technology company, or a government that wants to incentivize trustworthy technology, must consider sustainability as part of its obligations. So here briefly, you’ve heard a lot about AI footprint, handprint. Here’s how we found that that works. Let’s consider one aspect, as Kenneth brought up, of AI development, data centers. Data centers are a vital component of digital infrastructure, and they support a variety of applications, not just AI, cloud computing, complex data processing. AI’s rapid expansion is increasing the demand we place on these centers. And this is likely to increase significantly every year for the near future. Our estimate from January is a 50% annual increase through 2030. And so that gets us to the handprint. If AI is significantly increasing our energy use, we can use AI to potentially offset that. And there’s two ways we can do that. One, I think as Anton mentioned, we can make AI more efficient. We can have it use energy more efficiently through more efficient hardware, through more efficient models, by making better data centers. And we can also use AI to make other energy uses more efficient. That’s the sustainability handprint that we talked about for AI. What we found in our work is that through grid optimization, energy management, renewables forecasting, and energy storage, we can use AI to bolster the tools that we’ve already developed to support sustainability. So as I mentioned earlier, this is based on choices we have to make. And this is what brings together the themes of the week. If our innovations have caused a problem, and severe environmental toll is certainly a problem, then it may be possible for us to innovate our way out of that problem, but only if we decide to do that. Only if we decide that digital trust is important, and only if we decide that good governance is worth pursuing and cooperate in defining what that looks like, so we can have both innovation and sustainability, and thereby build trust. Thank you very much.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Daniel, for that very interesting and in-depth presentation on trust, and such an important part of this conversation as well. Now, I’m going to introduce our next speaker before we engage in a panel discussion with the great speakers, and diving deeper, as I said, into the topics that they’ve touched upon in their presentations. So, while focusing now on the financial sector sustainability impact as a research lead in the World Benchmarking Alliance, Penelope Bergmark was earlier the principal researcher on ICT sustainability, and that is the sustainability impact at Ericsson, where she conducted peer-reviewed research, and led standardization on topics connected to assessment of sustainability of digital, in particular, focusing on climate and other environmental topics. And as a standardizer, Penelope has been very active, really, in bodies such as ITU, ISO, ETSI, and other co-led methodologies in development for avoided emissions, smart, sustainable cities, and net zero and decarbonization strategies as well. So, without further ado, I will leave it up to her to talk more about the subject. She’s going to be sharing the World Benchmarking Alliance’s point of view on net positive sustainability, and also. discussing approaches for greening digital companies and also advancing handprint frameworks to measure and enhance their impact. Please join me in welcoming Pernilla to the stage. Pernilla Bergmark who is the research lead financial systems transformation for the World Benchmarking Alliance and again a warm round of applause ladies and gentlemen. Pernilla. Thank you so

Pernilla Bergmark: much Natalie and thank you Norway and IGF for inviting me. As you can hear my voice is not perfect today so I hope it will last for this presentation. I represent an organization called WBA World Benchmarking Alliance. We provide benchmarks and data and insights to policymakers, civil society and to the industries to help understand how they are delivering on social and environmental impacts. We do that across 2,000 companies across industries and 200 of them are from the tech sector and that I will refer to today. As we have heard today already we can divide impacts from digital into three categories. We have the first order impacts which is also the footprint which has been referred to earlier. We have the second order impacts which is the avoided but also added emissions when ICT is used or digital solutions are used in different sectors and we have the higher order effects called rebound. I by that challenge a bit the previous speakers by saying that the handprint is not only about avoiding emissions in other sectors but it can also be adding emissions in other sectors so that’s an important thing to remember. If you as you heard also from the first speaker There is a trajectory which tells us how much the ICT sector should reduce its emissions between 2020 and 2040 by 45 percent. That is based on the normative framework which was developed by ITU and SBTI and so forth. This is not really what we are seeing happening yet. Based on research until 2020 we can see that the footprint has really not started to decline but it’s stable while it should decline by seven percent basically a year. So as WBA we are working with the ITU. We have a report that we publish on an annual basis called the Green Digital Report. In this report we are looking at the first footprint of the sector and we are also rating companies in relation to their commitments, in relation to their performance and also in relation to how transparent they are. We can see also there that we are not really on the right track. So in comparison with 2020 we can see that telecom operators have actually reduced operational emissions somewhat but at the same time we can see that AI driven companies have increased their operational emissions with up to 150 percent. And also we can see that while these companies are investing quite heavily in renewables it’s not always renewables which leads to additionality but it’s definitely something which is good. But we can also see that there is a concentration of emissions, so only 10 out of 164 companies that reported are actually providing half the emissions. We can also see when it comes to targets that it’s below 20 percent of the assessed digital emissions which are in the target which is where companies are on the track with meeting the target. And we can also see that while over half the companies have targets we can see that only 45 percent of emissions are under a target. So that remains a lot to do and especially when we come to what’s called scope free the value chain emissions that are just 58 companies. I should speed up a bit. Let’s go to the second order effect whether this is net positive net negative or net zero for the sector. This is not a new discussion. Already in 2008 there was a famous report called the smart 2020 that looked into the handprint and proposed solutions that could help reduce emissions globally. It came out with the conclusion that 15 percent of overall global emission could be reduced by the ICT sector by the digital sector. However if we look at recent data from our word in data we can see that if we look at all the sectors where ICT is supposed to reduce this handprint we can see that they are not reducing by 15 percent. Then you can maybe say that the ICT without the ICT sector it would have been even worse. We cannot know that but we are definitely not seeing this delivered as of yet. What can we say about more recent development? Of course if you compare with 2008 we are a highly digital society which we were not at that point. But we can also see that the claims that are made today are very similar to the claims made in 2008 but we are adding like new buzzwords to describe them. We have the methodology development and standardization has developed a lot. Our understanding of this handprint is much deeper today but many of the studies which are presented are quite limited in scope or they are still quite crude. So it’s very hard to know where the sector is as a whole. We see in those studies that there is often a cherry-picking. That means that you have chosen solutions which are delivering the positive effects rather than looking at all solutions. There is also double counting and also over generous extrapolation from small studies to wider effect. So there is definitely a need for in-depth studies, wider studies. And also these higher order effects rebound are often omitted while they have a substantial impact in reality. So there are a lot of key questions that remains to be answered. So I’m looking forward to discuss that with my fellow panelists. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for that presentation. I’m going to ask you to kindly have a seat over here. Thank you so much. We are going to be heading into our panel discussion. So we’re going to invite our speakers who along with Pernilla have also contributed here with their presentations.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: So, thank you so much, Pranila. I would like to invite back onto stage, please join me in giving a warm round of applause, our audience, and you at home can too, our global audience who are watching from online. Please join me in welcoming again, Jon Gravik, please, Gravrak, please join us on stage. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let’s go ahead, here, please. Anton. Anton. Anton. Kenneth. Kenneth. Kenneth. Kenneth. It keeps everybody’s energy up. Please join us, Kenneth. And then we have Jon Iven, Jon Iven. Jon Iven. Jon Iven. Jon Iven. Jon Iven. over there, over there, okay? And Daniel, please join us on stage. Okay. Okay. And we have a, thank you so much. Joining us also in this panel discussion, ladies and gentlemen, we have Karianne Tung, who serves as our Minister of Digitalization and Public Governance since taking office in 2023. She has been a leading voice on digital transformation, AI regulation and public sector innovation in Norway. Last year, she presented the government’s new national digitalization strategy, a roadmap really guiding Norway’s digital development towards 2030, with the goal of becoming the most digitalized country in the world. Please join me in welcoming Karianne Tung, our Minister for Digitalization and Public Governance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have the opportunity to hear from our various speakers, their take on, well, their take on the guiding question of how to… obtain a net positive result, not just do no harm but actually how do we positively turn this around, and that is what we’re going to be diving into here. Without further ado, I want to just also say thank you to our panel for your wonderful contributions and looking now at how we together can move forward towards net positive right. Where do we start? There’s so much to talk about and so many interesting points that you’ve all raised, but we have to start somewhere, so let’s start here. Minister Tunga, I’m going to direct the first question to you. What kind of governance do you believe is needed to ensure that digitalization really drives net positive

Karianne Tung: sustainability, innovation and value creation? Thank you moderator for the question. I believe that digitalization is the tool that we need to solve huge societal challenges, but also to chase down the possibilities that comes with the digitalization. That is also why I set the goal of being the most digitalized country in the world by 2030. Norway is already quite a digitalized society, but we still have a way to go and a continuous way to go. One year ago in Norway, we then established a new ministry for digitalization and public governance. We did that because we saw the need for better coordination and better steering of digitalization across sectors, but also working across borders internationally, so that we could find the positive sides of digitalization. Because we really need to cooperate across borders to be able to find the pathway, both for public sector, but also the business sector, to work together to be able to do this in a sustainable way, in an energy efficient way as well. Because we know we can use digitalization as a positive tool, but also with digitalization. we see emissions, we see challenges, and to be able to tackle these challenges we have to work together as well. So, cooperation, standardization and clear goals is the way I’m working with digitalization.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much for answering that question, Minister. Jan Eyvind, over to you. What is your take on that? Thank you, Natalie. Of course, I’d like to add to what Minister Tonge said.

John Eivind Velure: Of course, we at the Norwegian Regulator, the Norwegian Communications Authority, are first known as a regulator, of course. But in our mandate, it’s very clear that we have a mandate to drive sustainability, innovation and value creation also across the sector. That is also related to equipment and services and now also, of course, the data centers. So, we find it helpful to view the green and digital transitions as one continuous innovation journey. So, that is why also digital sustainability and innovation is one of our core strategic pillars at ENCOM. So, first of all, I think we, and it might be obvious, but the governance must be knowledge-based. That is core. So, as also we have informed about today, we began by commissioning a full lifecycle analysis of the footprint of the Norway networks, data centers and devices. So, we have a shared reference point that we can start talking around. We have a common language. That is very important. Second, the governance must also stimulate innovation and business growth. So, we see and research shows that sustainability drives competitive advantage. So, regulators need to understand emerging technologies and even co-create solutions. solutions. And at ENCOM, we try to cooperate also with the industry, with the telecom industry. And I have one example of that, that we are also, we have the tower companies where we learn how the tower site batteries may be used to stabilize the power grid. That is one example. So, and third, we also must strengthen partnership, as also Kayane Tong said, and international cooperation. So, we have a strong tradition of working with industry and NRAs, but we also must use the multi-stakeholder model to increase this. So, knowledge, innovation and collaboration, I think that is three words.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Great. Three great keywords to take forward into this conversation. Kenneth, over to you.

Kenneth Fredriksen: Well, I think from our perspective, obviously, it’s not only about sustainability for the society, it’s also about making sure that we can sustain a sustainable industry for ourselves. I mean, unless we are able to continue to innovate and drive down the energy efficiency of our equipment, our industry itself is not going to be sustainable. But as I also said in my presentation, it’s extremely important to create ecosystems to maximize the potential of the handprint of ICT technology. I mean, and I think also awareness of the energy used of such technology is extremely important among a broader audience. I always use a very, you know, it’s starting to become an old fun fact, but back in 2017, we did an assessment on, you know, trying to find examples to understand better how much energy is actually used. And for those who remember the gangbang style video on YouTube, that video by 2017 had consumed equal CO2. emissions to the taxi industry in Germany in one year. And that puts things into perspective and was kind of a wake-up call, I think, also for the industry to understand that we have to continue to innovate if we are going to be able to meet the data explosion. Thank you so much and that really does paint a

Natalie Becker Aakervik: picture very clearly for us of the challenge and the task ahead and why these conversations are so important. Coming over to you, Anton. Yeah, I would love to bring in another thought when talking about sustainable digital

Anton Aschwanden: development. I think, obviously, it’s an ecological aspect but it’s also a social aspect and we’re today super privileged to be here in Norway where you’re one of the leading digital nations. But it’s also a reality that 2.6 billion people on this planet Earth are still offline. So I think this is, when talking about sustainable digital development, we also need to think on how we can assure that this current digital divide is filled with sustainable infrastructure, obviously, but that we also make sure that this digital divide doesn’t suddenly become an AI divide. And those are our current topics we’re working on. So speaking about infrastructure, I think it’s key not only to think about the Northern Hemisphere, so to say, but also, and this morning there was a debate about subsea cables in the other room, that we think on how we connect people. And as Google, this is one of the priorities we’re having, like connecting the African continent as an illustration, but then also like building subsea cables where they do not exist right now, for example, between the Southern American continent and Africa and Africa directly going over to the Pacific region without going over the over the north. I think this is really key that we not only think about like ecological questions, but also like about the investments, doing it obviously in a sustainable way. And then the skilling, it was already mentioned there. I think in this age, when talking to people working at Google, they ask me, what should I do with this AI thing? And I just say, take the basic classes, take their offerings from Google, like prompting classes, AI essentials. But there are many, many offerings.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Go out, try it out, do the upskilling. I think this is my key message here, that we really have this sustainable development in a global sense. Anton, thank you for your contribution. I’d like to come over to you now, Daniel. You raised some very interesting points in your talk as well. And how would you answer this question? What kind of governance is needed to ensure that digitalization drives net positive sustainability, innovation and value creation? Yeah, I think that’s a great question.

Daniel Dobrygowski: It’s really a question of measurement and decision making. I think sometimes global cooperation is difficult, right? Sometimes it’s easy, like it is on this panel, right? We all sort of agree on where we want to see the world in the future. We all sort of agree on how important sustainability is. But the real question is, how do you get there? And that’s a question of the decisions we make. We’re unlikely to slow the pace of innovation, right? But as Minister Tong said, we can still steer it. And it’s better steering that we need. In order to have better steering, we need better inputs. And this gets to what my colleague John Elvin said. We need better reference points among all the stakeholders who are developing these technologies, who are making decisions about these technologies. And one of those reference points are accurate measurements about how much new technologies are impacting our sustainability goals, how much they’re either, how much the footprint costs, how much the handprint can alleviate. This is fundamentally the question that we all need to work together to figure out what good looks like and then how do we measure whether we’re achieving that?

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much, Daniel. Tropician Pinnilla, World Benchmarking Alliance, what do you say to that question?

Pernilla Bergmark: So I agree very much with what has been said that the digital divide is there and of course there has to be access to digital technologies for all, not only for the wealthy part of the world. But at the same time, I think companies need to come to, especially the handprint side, and not so much from a marketing perspective, but rather to look into what are the opportunities, but what are also the risk, which are the solutions we should use, and how can we make sure to maximize those, and also which are the solutions, or not solutions, maybe the wrong word, but what are the services that we should avoid? So there is one infrastructure layer, but there is also the service layer on top that we need to be careful about.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much, Pinnilla, from the World Benchmarking Alliance for that response. And then I’d like to go over to Jan, bulk infrastructure, how would you answer that question?

Jon Gravrak: Well, I think there’s many questions being addressed here, but I think I’m coming back to, I mean, our digital society having to be linked with the energy system. I think they’re so closely interlinked to begin with, that we have to see them almost as one. And I think as we’ve learned through, I think, generations, the energy system is not a local one. It works best when you can think about it, at least in continental terms, or at least maybe even global terms. And I think that’s some of the thinking we need to apply now that we integrate the digital system into that as well. And for sitting here in Norway, I think our role in Europe is very important. And I think we are fortunate enough to have, you know, surplus of renewables. energy in this part of the world and we’re fortunate enough to be quite close to continental Europe but also with a coastline where our next neighbor is actually North America if you cross the Atlantic and and if you even go let’s say across the Arctic then then you actually hit Asia. I think there’s something here that I think there need there’s a need for bold leadership to see how this digital system could evolve not tomorrow but but actually to serve you know our planet for for generations ahead and then I think we need to think about how to build those power-consuming data centers in places where they can piggyback on what nature is already offered us and where we can maybe build new renewable energy and so on and fuel let’s say the digital needs via fiber networks in a slightly different way and I think that has to be seen in side by side by sovereignty issues which is another part of this but I think we need to overcome both right we need to build local solutions with the right robustness for our local societies but we also need to work together to find the truly sustainable solutions in between countries and even in between continents.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much for for that answer Jan. Now our next question is diving a little bit deeper into this I’m going to give the word again to Minister Tung to answer the question and then I’m going to ask our panelists if they would like to answer to that question but we have a number of other deeper questions that are potentially more specific to your industries that I’m also going to pose so you’ll have an option but Minister Tung also and the next question I’d like to ask you is how can we reduce the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint and its positive contributions

Karianne Tung: to society and and sustainability? Thank you well It’s easy and it’s hard, because as a minister or as a politician, you then have to be able to have two thoughts in your head at the same time. And that can be hard enough sometimes. You have to have the thought that you are going to reduce emissions directly from the digital infrastructure and from digitalization. And then you have to thought that you have to use digitalization as a tool for making the green and digital transformation possible. And being a politician, being reelected, you have also to get the people on board, to be able to have these two thoughts at the same time. So easy to say, maybe a little bit harder to do in practice as well. But a foundation for doing this exercise about two thoughts is knowledge. And I think my colleague here, Jon Avin, mentioned it earlier also. Knowledge is crucial for being able to develop good policies and good plans, good strategies, and ENCOM have now made the lifecycle analysis of emissions from digitalization in Norway. We are the second country in the world. So using that knowledge, the benchmark and the measurements that ENCOM has mentioned, I think it’s crucial for being able to do both at the same time, because we need to have success with digitalization. We need to use AI and other technologies for our healthcare services. We need to use it to make our businesses excel. We need to use it to keep secure and safe and to collaborate across borders internationally as well. So based on the knowledge, which the report and lifecycle analysis from ENCOM, I will use that here in Norway to make good policies. We are now a couple of days, couple of weeks away from launching our new data center strategy. We know data centers uses a lot of energy today, but we’ll use more in the years to come. So make data centers efficient, energy efficient. sustainable is important, but also data center is important for keeping security, digital sovereignty, and so forth. And I think there are some research shown here in Norway, that if you are able to reuse the excess heat from data centers, you will reduce the use of 10% from power, from energy in Norway as well. So making the data center efficient is important for us, but also making the data centers good so that we can have safe digital infrastructures in the years to come.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much for answering that question, Minister, and some very salient points there. So I would like to pose that question to the panel, but keeping in mind that this is not an easy challenge. This is not an easy challenge we’re talking about. This is challenging for real, as somebody said earlier on. So the question then about how can we actually reduce the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint, I would like to pose to the panel if you would like to answer that. The other questions or potentially things that you can touch on inside that is innovation, let’s say in digitalization, including lots of new and emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain, and IoT. What is the link between sustainability and innovation? How do we make that bridge? Also value creation, keeping the idea of net positive in mind. How can we make sure that data centers contribute to societies where they operate and create lasting value? And then the question on data, what gets measured gets done. That we know. So then do we have the right frameworks in place to measure the footprint and handprint? And then awareness. Mindset, what kind of mindset is needed? And values for sustainability leaders to shape digital infrastructure for the next generation? And what roles do the variety of stakeholders? play in ensuring trustworthy, just and sustainable digital innovation? I’m going to go over to you again, Jan, because I know that mindset and stakeholders were potentially things that you wanted to touch upon in answering your question. Please go ahead.

Jon Gravrak: Thank you so much. I think these are big questions and we need to think big thoughts. So, I mean, our sustainability framework is about location, which I spent a lot of time on, then it’s obviously to build, let’s say, data centers which consume as limited energy as possible with the support of the suppliers here. And then we also think around the ecosystem. How can data centers be a good citizen, you know, in a very local ecosystem? And I think the third one is interesting here, because the minister talked about excess heat, right, and our ability to make reuse of that heat. And I think it’s not a new problem, because all power-consuming industries have for 120 years had the same problem, that heat is a byproduct of the core process and it’s released to the atmosphere. But I think our kids, they will not accept that we now build a new industry without making sure we use the energy twice. I think that’s the difference. So we are the ones that have to resolve it, or at least we’re looked upon by our kids that the ones that should resolve it and not leave it to them. And I think it’s a big problem. So, yeah, the easy part is maybe reuse some of that heat in the big cities to heat up apartments and so on. But it’s not really a great solution, because there’s not enough need for heat in the cities. And by the way, the data centers shouldn’t reside next to the big cities. They should reside close to the power in rural areas. So in my opinion, the solution here is to build industrial use of heat. You need to find and stimulate opportunities for other industries that actually need heat. It could be breweries. could be food production, could be protein production, where they co-locate with the big data centers. Then we can solve many problems in one go.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much for that. Thank you for that. Daniel, what would you like to touch on in answering that question? And I can repeat the question, it’s how do we reduce the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint? But is there anything in particular that you want to touch on? Do we have the right frameworks, data, value creation, innovation, awareness? Are we aware enough, are we accepting the challenge? How difficult is this, really? Yeah, I think this gets back to what Jan was pointing out.

Daniel Dobrygowski: For a long time, industries that use a lot of energy also generate a lot of waste heat. Why hasn’t that been collected? I think the issue is that the incentives haven’t aligned. In a lot of countries, especially ones that are heavily invested in developing AI and other innovations, electricity is fairly cheap and waste heat is essentially free. How can we realign incentives to ensure that there is the kind of business case you want to see in order to capture that heat, to think ahead about what we’re gonna do for these data centers? Or how do you incentivize more efficient uses of energy? I think in some cases, that takes care of itself because more efficient AI models generally cost less, so therefore the electricity costs less, there’s a cost savings there. But how do you incentivize the use of that sort of heat? I think that’s the big question we need to answer in order to get through the sustainability issues that this raises and maybe increase the handprint at the decrease of the footprint and the nomenclature we’ve been using. Thank you.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you for that, Daniel. Then also, I’d like to come back to you, Kenneth. How would you like to answer the question and how do you want to dive more deeply into this so that we get to the nitty gritty and have some actionable takeaways?

Kenneth Fredriksen: I think it’s important to keep in mind that this is both a global challenge and also a local. challenge, both in negative and positive terms. I think it’s extremely important that Europe, for example, doesn’t end up over-regulating itself, like we perhaps have done in the past, to kind of handicap ourself in terms of realizing the handprint potential. Because these are two very interconnected things. Unless you are properly doing the footprint job, you cannot realize the handprint potential. But if you are too restrictive on the footprint part, you’re going to limit your handprint opportunities as well. And in order to finance the innovation and continuous development of the handprint, you need to have value creation. And that is on the handprint part. So it’s very connected. And I think we, as Kariana said, we need to be able to have several thoughts in our head at the same time to understand the overall picture and the total picture of this. Because if we only focus on reducing the footprint part, we’re going to limit ourselves a lot on the handprint, especially in the short term. Because I think a lot of the potential will be realized longer down the road. And you need some investments, both in terms of the transition period and, of course, also in terms of money and resources.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Absolutely. Minister Steng, I’d like you to keep that in mind, that question, as you talk about keeping two thoughts in mind. And, Vanilla, if I may come over to you. Answering that question, how do we minimize the footprint, maximize the handprint, but looking specifically, then, at frameworks as well. Data, for example, what gets measured gets done. Do we have the right frameworks to measure the footprint and the handprint? And to really understand and steer towards this net positive effect that we’re talking about.

Pernilla Bergmark: I think, basically, we have been working on the methodologies and the standards for a long time. So I would say the basic standards are probably there, but it’s also about using them to make claims, but then also to supervising what’s happening, what is the data coming out, and to learn from that. So, as I mentioned in my presentation, of course, we see, when we benchmark companies, that there are leaders that are doing really well, but then it goes all the way down to the bottom, and the sector as a whole is not really where it needs to be. And I think those initiatives, like in Norway, and also previously with ASEP, which, I know quite well from before, I think that those are good, but there are also methodological challenges and learnings to to get from those.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you. Thank you so much for that. I wanted to hop over to to to Anton from from Google and just also to to ask about that question, how do we do this for real? It’s a challenge, obviously. And do you want to bring in a strand around innovation as well and to answer it with that? Yeah, I think it’s really about collaboration.

Anton Aschwanden: We have now a significant present with with infrastructure here in Europe, too. And like not a single company or a single actor or sector can do that alone. So I think it’s about like sharing best practices as well. I was mentioning that that we are about to deepen our roots here in Norway with with an upcoming data center in and she in in in the telemark country. But we already have other data centers in the region. I mean, I’m in Finland and like thinking about like, how can you better cool the infrastructure to like in this case with water cooling and then also share those best practices? I think this is this is this is one element in this really pursuit of increase the efficiency of of of those infrastructures. And and we’re doing our part there. And then it’s also collaboration in the sense of having access to to better data. I was mentioning some cases with the eco routing previously in my speech. But there are also platforms like environment inside Explorer where like local communities, cities can get more data on where they can improve their their their own system, for example, heating or transport. So I think this this is really. And that’s why we’re so so so happy that that the Norwegians are taking the lead here, that that’s in the true multistakeholder spirit to to exchange solutions and best practices. And again, I can only invite you to come to our booth afterwards where we have some of the tools I mentioned before.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you, Daniel. And we do invite you to visit all of the booths outside. We had a fantastic exhibition outside and it’s going to be there all week, so I hope you have time. The word data keeps popping up, so what gets measured gets done. Do we have the right frameworks? Do we really understand and steer towards what it takes?

John Eivind Velure: I’m going to pose that question to you, Jan Eyvind. What do you have to say on that? I think I’m the first to admit that this is a challenging task. It’s difficult. And also as a traditional regulator, we are not used to actually put this high on the agenda. We have done so in the last couple of years and now we are starting to see some results, putting in some effort. But I think that is a key issue that regulators, governments need to put this high on the agenda to start. And then you also need to seek knowledge because our start here with this analysis, of course we have used a methodology, but we need more. We need to learn from each other, we need to share data and we need to develop this so that we have a common basis. The politicians need this to also take decisions. And I think we have just started here and this needs to be developed further. And we are too small to do this by ourselves. So by meeting here, I think that is also spreading the word. It’s very important. And to initiate further collaboration, that is the key to succeed, I think.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much, Jan Eivind. And then coming over to you, Minister Thang. I knew there were potentially several things you wanted to respond to, so to give you the opportunity, do you want to start? do so and also in terms of awareness and accepting the challenge how aware are Norway and other nations and companies when it comes to achieving this net positive digital sustainability?

Karianne Tung: Thank you. Norway has high ambition when it comes to digitalization but also cutting emissions and to be sustainable and we want to lead the way. So we are doing a couple of things already. I just want to mention them quickly. First we are demanding from industries also new data centers that they have to do analysis on how they can reuse their heat already to try to move over from just wasting heat and to reuse it in neighborhoods or for new industries as well. So that is one thing we have to do better when it comes to the circular economy because today most emission from digitalization is not from data centers but they are from mobile phones, iPads and like hardware. So to be able to keep your hardware longer to fix it if it’s broken and so forth to work with the citizens and their mindset on how they use things are important. And also we are now trying to prohibit mining of cryptocurrency in Norway because we can see that mining is not energy efficient. So that’s what we are trying to do so that we can keep the data center that we really need in the future for making digitalization possible in our society. So we are getting there. We are doing some hard action and some more soft actions but we need to do more to be sure that we are able to get that positive in the future. Thank you so much, Minister Tung. And on that note I would like to say thank you so much to our esteemed panel and thank you to our audience also for joining us.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: We truly appreciate it. wondering if there was anyone in the panel who wanted to contribute just a 60 second kind of wrap-up or 30 to 60 second wrap-up final final thoughts if not we’ll wrap up but I’m going to give you the opportunity to do so.

Jon Gravrak: Yeah I’ll take my chance. I think my wrap-up is simply that we’re still we have to accept that we’re still at a very humble beginning of what we’re building now of digital societies and my encouragement is that to think about that as an integrated part of our energy system and to do our kids a favor and make this one a sustainable one. Thank you so much please go ahead. I’m gonna be

Kenneth Fredriksen: short I think in order to solve any challenge you need to continue to innovate and the best way of innovating is to make sure you have proper competition so I think innovation and competition is going to be a key solution to these challenges. Thank you. Daniel. I guess I’ll just contribute to

Daniel Dobrygowski: one one of the words we talked about a little bit was justice. We might refer to it as fairness in the forums framework and I’m sure there’s some Rawlsian legal philosophers is like oh they’re the same thing I see you but the that’s the point of this right to talk to to innovate in an unsustainable way it’s not fair it’s not just to people aren’t sitting here to people who are not born yet to future generations really need to put this in the context of what’s fair and what’s just and work together in order to create both the incentives and the measurements in order to have a sustainable innovation society going forward. Thank you so much for those parting words. Daniel. Just to add of

Natalie Becker Aakervik: course foster innovation make business cases but perhaps you also need some

Anton Aschwanden: regulation. There we go. I saw you raise your finger. Anton. Yes very grateful for this discussion. I think it’s crucial to look at the footprint but let’s also put things into perspective like right now the data set consumption worldwide according to the International Energy Agency is 1.5 percent. of global electricity. So I’m talking of everything, not our operations. Obviously it’s a challenge, it’s increasing, we need to work on it. But let’s not forget about like, this is the foundation of like all economies, society and all the potential solution. So my request would really be to see the opportunities of AI for good, also within the UN system. Now we have IGF this week, and in two weeks AI for good in Geneva, really see what’s happening and what potential solutions are out there.

Natalie Becker Aakervik: Thank you so much Anton. Minister Karianne Tung.

Karianne Tung: Yeah, and to follow up on Anton as well, I often say, and people remember, I think that one plus one is more than two, because it’s about cooperation. The government can do it alone, parliaments can do it alone, business sector can do it alone, citizens can’t do it alone. We all have to do it together within the framework of cooperation, but I also believe in the framework of regulation. Regulation which is not tight or too tight, but regulation that can define and make innovation possible. Thank you so much, Minister Tung

Natalie Becker Aakervik: And thank you so much to our esteemed panelists, our great speakers from all around the world who have made time to be here and have these very important conversations that affect all of us, that affect all of us. So thank you so much, our audience here, our audience globally. Let’s give our panelists a warm round of applause. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, then you might have to come down.

Agreement points

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for digital sustainability

Speakers

– Natalie Becker Aakervik
– John Eivind Velure
– Daniel Dobrygowski
– Karianne Tung

Arguments

Multi-stakeholder approach needed across public and private sectors

Governance requires knowledge-based approach, innovation stimulation, and international partnerships

Multi-stakeholder collaboration essential as no single actor can solve challenges alone

Need cooperation across sectors and borders with clear goals and standardization

Summary

All speakers agree that digital sustainability challenges cannot be solved by any single entity and require coordinated efforts across public and private sectors, regulators, innovators, and international boundaries.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Infrastructure

Knowledge-based governance with proper measurement frameworks is crucial

Speakers

– John Eivind Velure
– Nicolai Lovdal
– Daniel Dobrygowski
– Karianne Tung

Arguments

Governance requires knowledge-based approach, innovation stimulation, and international partnerships

Norway conducted full lifecycle analysis as foundation for evidence-based policy

Need better reference points and measurements to guide decision-making

Need cooperation across sectors and borders with clear goals and standardization

Summary

Speakers consistently emphasize that effective governance must be grounded in solid data and evidence, with proper measurement frameworks to guide policy decisions and create common reference points.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure | Development

Innovation and efficiency improvements are key to sustainability

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Anton Aschwanden
– Jon Gravrak

Arguments

Innovation and competition are key solutions to sustainability challenges

AI models now 100 times more energy efficient than earlier generations

Need industrial co-location solutions for heat reuse beyond urban heating

Summary

Industry representatives agree that continuous innovation and technological efficiency improvements are fundamental to achieving digital sustainability goals.

Topics

Infrastructure | Economic | Development

Strategic location of data centers near renewable energy sources

Speakers

– Jon Gravrak
– Anton Aschwanden
– Karianne Tung

Arguments

Location of data centers matters – should be near renewable energy sources in northern regions

Digital sustainability must address both ecological and social aspects

Norway requiring new data centers to analyze heat reuse opportunities

Summary

Speakers agree that data center placement should be strategic, considering proximity to renewable energy sources and opportunities for energy efficiency and heat reuse.

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Economic

Similar viewpoints

Both Norwegian officials present a unified approach to digital sustainability measurement, emphasizing the need for comprehensive frameworks that account for both positive and negative impacts of digitalization.

Speakers

– John Eivind Velure
– Nicolai Lovdal

Arguments

Net positive means handprint benefits minus footprint costs, adjusted for rebound effects

Developing open-source dashboard for measuring digital sustainability impact

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory | Development

Industry representatives from major technology companies share optimistic views about the handprint potential of digital technologies, emphasizing significant positive impacts that can outweigh negative footprints.

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Anton Aschwanden

Arguments

ICT solutions can deliver 10x improvement in other industries vs ICT emissions

AI can help mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions through optimization

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Development

Both researchers present critical assessments of current progress, highlighting gaps between expectations and reality in both public trust and corporate performance on sustainability targets.

Speakers

– Daniel Dobrygowski
– Pernilla Bergmark

Arguments

Trust in AI low with only 44% comfortable with business AI uses

Only 20% of assessed companies are on track to meet emission targets

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Unexpected consensus

Need for regulation that enables rather than restricts innovation

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Karianne Tung
– Anton Aschwanden

Arguments

Risk of over-regulation limiting handprint potential in Europe

Need regulation that enables innovation rather than restricts it

Digital sustainability must address both ecological and social aspects

Explanation

Surprisingly, both industry representatives and government officials agree on the need for balanced regulation that facilitates rather than hinders innovation, showing alignment between private and public sector perspectives on regulatory approach.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Economic | Infrastructure

Acknowledgment of current inadequate progress despite technological advances

Speakers

– Pernilla Bergmark
– Anton Aschwanden
– John Eivind Velure

Arguments

Current sector performance shows emissions not declining as required

Data centers consume 1.5% of global electricity but provide foundation for all economies

International collaboration essential for developing common standards

Explanation

Despite representing different perspectives (critical researcher, industry advocate, and regulator), speakers unexpectedly converge on acknowledging that current progress is insufficient and more coordinated effort is needed.

Topics

Infrastructure | Economic | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus exists on the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, knowledge-based governance, strategic infrastructure placement, and balanced regulation that enables innovation while ensuring sustainability.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with speakers from different sectors (government, industry, research, international organizations) aligning on fundamental principles. This suggests a mature understanding of digital sustainability challenges and broad agreement on solution approaches, which bodes well for coordinated action and policy development.

Different viewpoints

Regulatory approach to digital sustainability

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Karianne Tung
– Anton Aschwanden

Arguments

Risk of over-regulation limiting handprint potential in Europe

Need regulation that enables innovation rather than restricts it

Need investment in subsea cables and connectivity for underserved regions

Summary

Kenneth warns against over-regulation that could handicap Europe’s ability to realize handprint potential, while Minister Tung advocates for specific regulatory measures like prohibiting cryptocurrency mining and requiring heat reuse analysis. Anton suggests some regulation may be needed alongside innovation.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Economic | Infrastructure

Priority focus between footprint reduction and handprint maximization

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Pernilla Bergmark

Arguments

ICT solutions can deliver 10x improvement in other industries vs ICT emissions

Current sector performance shows emissions not declining as required

Summary

Kenneth emphasizes the significant handprint potential and warns against being too restrictive on footprint, while Pernilla focuses on the concerning reality that the sector is not meeting emission reduction targets and questions handprint claims.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Economic

Assessment of current progress and future potential

Speakers

– Anton Aschwanden
– Pernilla Bergmark

Arguments

AI models now 100 times more energy efficient than earlier generations

AI-driven companies increased operational emissions by up to 150%

Summary

Anton highlights significant efficiency improvements in AI technology and emphasizes the 1.5% global electricity consumption perspective, while Pernilla presents data showing AI-driven companies have dramatically increased their operational emissions.

Topics

AI and Emerging Technologies Impact | Infrastructure | Economic

Unexpected differences

Perspective on current AI energy consumption impact

Speakers

– Anton Aschwanden
– Pernilla Bergmark

Arguments

Data centers consume 1.5% of global electricity but provide foundation for all economies

AI-driven companies increased operational emissions by up to 150%

Explanation

This disagreement is unexpected because both speakers are presenting data-driven perspectives, yet they reach different conclusions about the urgency of the AI energy consumption problem. Anton emphasizes the relatively small percentage and foundational importance, while Pernilla highlights the dramatic increase in emissions from AI companies.

Topics

AI and Emerging Technologies Impact | Infrastructure | Economic

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of disagreement center on regulatory approaches (market-driven vs. policy-driven solutions), the balance between footprint reduction and handprint maximization, and assessments of current progress versus future potential in AI energy efficiency.

Disagreement level

Moderate disagreement with significant implications. While speakers share common goals of achieving net positive digital sustainability, their different approaches could lead to conflicting policy recommendations. The disagreements reflect broader tensions between industry perspectives emphasizing innovation and efficiency gains versus regulatory/academic perspectives emphasizing the need for immediate emission reductions and stronger oversight.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both Norwegian officials present a unified approach to digital sustainability measurement, emphasizing the need for comprehensive frameworks that account for both positive and negative impacts of digitalization.

Speakers

– John Eivind Velure
– Nicolai Lovdal

Arguments

Net positive means handprint benefits minus footprint costs, adjusted for rebound effects

Developing open-source dashboard for measuring digital sustainability impact

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory | Development

Industry representatives from major technology companies share optimistic views about the handprint potential of digital technologies, emphasizing significant positive impacts that can outweigh negative footprints.

Speakers

– Kenneth Fredriksen
– Anton Aschwanden

Arguments

ICT solutions can deliver 10x improvement in other industries vs ICT emissions

AI can help mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions through optimization

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Development

Both researchers present critical assessments of current progress, highlighting gaps between expectations and reality in both public trust and corporate performance on sustainability targets.

Speakers

– Daniel Dobrygowski
– Pernilla Bergmark

Arguments

Trust in AI low with only 44% comfortable with business AI uses

Only 20% of assessed companies are on track to meet emission targets

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Key takeaways

Net digital sustainability requires achieving net positive outcomes where the handprint (positive impacts) exceeds the footprint (negative impacts) adjusted for rebound effects

Knowledge-based governance is essential – Norway’s lifecycle analysis provides a foundation for evidence-based policy and common reference points

Multi-stakeholder collaboration across sectors and borders is critical as no single actor can solve sustainability challenges alone

Digital infrastructure location matters significantly – data centers should be positioned near renewable energy sources, particularly in northern regions

Innovation and competition are key drivers for solving sustainability challenges, but must be balanced with appropriate regulation

AI and emerging technologies present both challenges (increased energy consumption) and solutions (potential to mitigate 5-10% of global emissions)

Waste heat reuse from data centers represents major untapped potential, requiring industrial co-location solutions beyond urban heating

The digital divide (2.6 billion people offline) must not become an AI divide, requiring sustainable infrastructure development globally

Current sector performance is insufficient – emissions are not declining at the required 45% rate by 2030, with only 20% of companies on track

Resolutions and action items

Norway will launch a new data center strategy requiring heat reuse analysis for new facilities

Development of an open-source dashboard for measuring digital sustainability impact in Norway

Prohibition of cryptocurrency mining in Norway due to energy inefficiency

Continued international collaboration through multi-stakeholder forums like IGF

Industry commitment to sharing best practices and developing common standards

Focus on circular economy approaches for device lifecycle management

Unresolved issues

How to create proper business incentives for waste heat capture and reuse when electricity is cheap

Balancing innovation needs with sustainability requirements to avoid over-regulation limiting handprint potential

Developing accurate methodologies for measuring handprint effects across different sectors

Addressing the challenge of cherry-picking in sustainability studies and avoiding double counting

Scaling local solutions to continental and global levels while maintaining sovereignty

Creating frameworks that account for rebound effects in sustainability calculations

Establishing trust in AI technologies when only 44% of people are comfortable with business AI uses

Suggested compromises

Regulation should enable innovation rather than restrict it – finding the balance between necessary oversight and innovation freedom

Thinking about digital and energy systems as integrated rather than separate – treating them as ‘digital energy’

Accepting that multiple thoughts must be held simultaneously – reducing direct emissions while using digitalization as a tool for broader sustainability

Focusing on both ecological and social aspects of sustainable digital development to address global inequities

Balancing short-term footprint concerns with long-term handprint potential, recognizing that investments are needed for transition periods

So if you add a handprint, subtract the footprint and adjust for the rebound effect, only then can we know if we achieve a net positive result worth celebrating.

Speaker

Jan Eivind Velure

Reason

This comment introduced a crucial mathematical framework for understanding net digital sustainability by clearly defining the three components needed for true measurement. The inclusion of the ‘rebound effect’ – where efficiency gains lead to increased usage – was particularly insightful as it challenges simplistic calculations of digital benefits.

Impact

This framework became the conceptual foundation for the entire discussion, with subsequent speakers referencing footprint vs handprint throughout. It elevated the conversation from vague sustainability goals to concrete measurement methodology and influenced how other panelists structured their presentations.

I by that challenge a bit the previous speakers by saying that the handprint is not only about avoiding emissions in other sectors but it can also be adding emissions in other sectors so that’s an important thing to remember.

Speaker

Pernilla Bergmark

Reason

This was a critical intervention that challenged the prevailing optimistic narrative about digital technology’s positive impacts. By pointing out that digital solutions can also increase emissions in other sectors, she introduced necessary nuance and skepticism to the discussion.

Impact

This comment shifted the tone from predominantly celebratory to more analytically rigorous. It forced other participants to acknowledge the complexity of measuring true impact and led to more honest discussions about the challenges of achieving net positive outcomes.

But I think our kids, they will not accept that we now build a new industry without making sure we use the energy twice. I think that’s the difference. So we are the ones that have to resolve it, or at least we’re looked upon by our kids that the ones that should resolve it and not leave it to them.

Speaker

Jon Gravrak

Reason

This comment powerfully reframed the sustainability challenge in generational and moral terms, moving beyond technical solutions to ethical responsibility. It personalized the abstract concept of sustainability by invoking intergenerational justice.

Impact

This shifted the discussion from technical feasibility to moral imperative, adding urgency and emotional weight to the conversation. It influenced subsequent speakers to consider not just what’s possible but what’s necessary from an ethical standpoint.

History has taught us that we cannot innovate, at least not over the long term, if we lose trust. That means we need to do better about how we ensure that people’s expectations guide our decisions around technology.

Speaker

Daniel Dobrygowski

Reason

This comment connected sustainability to the broader issue of digital trust, introducing the crucial insight that technical solutions alone are insufficient without public acceptance. The reference to historical precedent added weight to the argument.

Impact

This broadened the discussion beyond environmental metrics to include social acceptance and governance, leading to more nuanced conversations about stakeholder engagement and the need for transparent, participatory approaches to digital sustainability.

Unless you are properly doing the footprint job, you cannot realize the handprint potential. But if you are too restrictive on the footprint part, you’re going to limit your handprint opportunities as well.

Speaker

Kenneth Fredriksen

Reason

This comment articulated a key tension in digital sustainability policy – the balance between regulation and innovation. It highlighted the interconnected nature of environmental impact and technological advancement, challenging binary thinking about regulation vs. innovation.

Impact

This comment influenced the policy discussion by introducing the concept of regulatory balance. It led Minister Tung and others to discuss ‘smart regulation’ that enables rather than constrains sustainable innovation, shifting the conversation toward more sophisticated governance approaches.

So I think this is, when talking about sustainable digital development, we also need to think on how we can assure that this current digital divide is filled with sustainable infrastructure, obviously, but that we also make sure that this digital divide doesn’t suddenly become an AI divide.

Speaker

Anton Aschwanden

Reason

This comment expanded the sustainability discussion to include global equity and justice, connecting environmental concerns to social sustainability. The concept of preventing an ‘AI divide’ was particularly prescient given current technological developments.

Impact

This broadened the scope of the discussion from primarily environmental concerns to include social justice and global equity. It influenced subsequent conversations about the need for inclusive approaches to digital sustainability that consider both developed and developing nations.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by introducing critical complexity and nuance to what could have been a superficial conversation about ‘green tech.’ The mathematical framework established early on provided structure, while subsequent challenges and expansions prevented the discussion from becoming overly optimistic or narrow. The conversation evolved from technical presentations to a more sophisticated dialogue that balanced environmental, social, economic, and ethical considerations. The interplay between these comments created a multi-dimensional understanding of digital sustainability that acknowledged both opportunities and challenges, ultimately leading to more realistic and actionable insights about governance needs and stakeholder responsibilities.

How can we actually measure the handprint effectively, given its complex and uncertain nature?

Speaker

Nikolai Lovdal

Explanation

Lovdal acknowledged that measuring handprint is more challenging than footprint due to uncertainty and different methodological approaches, indicating this as an area requiring further development

How can we ensure that handprint studies avoid cherry-picking, double counting, and over-generous extrapolation?

Speaker

Pernilla Bergmark

Explanation

Bergmark highlighted methodological issues in current handprint studies and emphasized the need for more rigorous, comprehensive approaches to measuring positive impacts

How can we prevent the digital divide from becoming an AI divide?

Speaker

Anton Aschwanden

Explanation

Aschwanden raised concerns about ensuring equitable access to AI technologies globally, not just digital infrastructure, as a sustainability and justice issue

How can we create proper business cases and incentives for capturing and reusing waste heat from data centers?

Speaker

Daniel Dobrygowski and Jon Gravrak

Explanation

Both speakers identified the need to realign economic incentives to make heat reuse financially viable, as current cheap electricity costs don’t incentivize efficiency

How can we develop international collaboration frameworks for sharing the Norwegian dashboard methodology?

Speaker

Nikolai Lovdal

Explanation

Lovdal expressed interest in international collaboration and sharing their open-source dashboard approach, but specific frameworks for this collaboration need development

What are the most effective regulatory approaches that enable innovation while ensuring sustainability?

Speaker

Multiple speakers including Minister Tung and Anton Aschwanden

Explanation

The balance between regulation and innovation was discussed but specific regulatory frameworks that achieve both goals need further exploration

How can we better integrate digital infrastructure planning with energy system planning at continental or global scales?

Speaker

Jon Gravrak

Explanation

Gravrak emphasized the need to view digital and energy systems as integrated, but specific mechanisms for this integration at large scales require further research

What methodologies can accurately account for rebound effects in handprint calculations?

Speaker

Pernilla Bergmark

Explanation

Bergmark noted that rebound effects are often omitted from studies despite having substantial real-world impact, indicating a need for better methodological approaches

How can we develop standardized international metrics that align with existing frameworks like EU and ITU standards?

Speaker

Nikolai Lovdal and Jan Eyvind Velure

Explanation

Both speakers emphasized the need for common reference points and standardized approaches, but specific harmonization mechanisms need development

What are the most effective approaches for building industrial ecosystems around data center waste heat utilization?

Speaker

Jon Gravrak

Explanation

Gravrak suggested co-locating heat-using industries with data centers but specific strategies for creating these industrial ecosystems need further research