The Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age is a new international vision being co-created by the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) within the United Nations Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation.
The Action Plan recognizes that digital innovations have the potential to help mitigate the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, toxic pollution and waste, along with health risks and inequality.
The transformational capabilities of these innovations are crucial for the successful implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and in achieving its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. However, three fundamental shifts are necessary preconditions to harness digital technologies to accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable development to achieve this vision:
• Shift 1 Enable alignment: Create the enabling conditions to align the vision, values and objectives of the digital age with sustainable development;
• Shift 2 Mitigate negative impact: Commit to sustainable digitalization that mitigates the negative environmental and social impacts of digital technologies.
• Shift 3 Accelerate innovation: Direct efforts, incentives and investments toward digital innovation that accelerate environmental and social sustainability.
Each shift identifies six strategic priorities that must be addressed collectively by the global community for the shifts to actualize. This two-minute video outlines what’s at stake in using digital technologies to address environmental sustainability and what CODES is attempting to do.
The Action Plan is being presented at a side event on 2 March during the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) in Nairobi.
So, what is CODES and why does the Action Plan matter? We put these questions to David Jensen, coordinator of the Digital Transformation programme at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the focal point for CODES.
What are the priorities to catalyse each shift ?
There are six strategic priorities per shift that will need to be met for the Coalition’s vision of sustainable and equitable digital transformation to be realized.
Enabling alignment (Shift 1) of the vision, values and objectives of digital capabilities with sustainable development will require an evolution of current mindsets and norms and a commitment to move beyond profit towards positive socio-environmental outcomes. The six key priorities for this shift entail connecting communities, building digital competencies, taking advantage of science and arts, advancing multilateral action, building pioneering coalitions, and adopting norms and standards focusing on transparency, accountability and inclusive engagement.
As global reliance on digital technology increases, it will also be necessary to confront and proactively mitigate any negative socio-environmental impacts (Shift 2) in order to ensure the process of digitalization is inherently sustainable.
This shift requires focusing on six problem areas entrenched in digitalization: energy and emissions, materials, consumption behaviours, misinformation, digital divides, and rights violations.
Finally, full leverage of the power and reach of digital technology to accelerate planetary sustainability and human well-being will require thoughtful guidance at the collective and individual levels across every sector.
Shift 3 suggests six areas of innovation that must be intentionally incentivized to support digital sustainability. These include building a digital twin of the planet, enabling a circular economy, supporting sustainable consumption, promoting a knowledge commons, and creating networked and agile governance and accessible technologies for the whole of society.
What is CODES and why was it formed?
The coalition is an international multi-stakeholder alliance created in March 2021 as a response to the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation. The aim of CODES is to steer the use of digital technologies toward accelerating environmentally and socially sustainable development to meet the SDGs.
Presently, there are over 1,000 stakeholders involved in CODES ranging from governments, civil society, academia and the private sector. CODES is being co-championed by UNEP, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Science Council, Future Earth, the German Environment Agency, and the Kenyan Environment Ministry. The CODES process is conducted in close collaboration with the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology within the framework of the Digital Cooperation Roadmap.
Why is this Action Plan being presented now?
The emergence of the CODES Action Plan marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the UNEP, set-up to promote environmental sustainability. Over the last 50 years, the world has become more digitally connected than ever, and the digital economy is undermining conventional notions about how businesses are structured - how firms interact and how consumers obtain services, information, and goods.
The digital economy will soon become the ordinary economy as the uptake and application of digital technologies in every sector grows. However, the transition to a digital economy under the current “business as usual” paradigm will increasingly enable operating models that are not in line with the SDGs. Now is the time to collectively build a future in which digital technologies accelerate and scale environmental and social sustainability, underpin sustainable societies and economies, and empower citizens and local communities.
In the immediate term, the Action Plan is being designed to inform the Stockholm +50 conference scheduled for June 2022, as well as the Global Digital Compact proposed by the UN Secretary-General’s latest report “Our Common Agenda,” which calls for a new landscape of digital governance to harness data for the global good.
The Action Plan will also be used as a reference document for ongoing deliberations at UNEA and in the UN Human Rights Council that intersect digital transformation and the recently recognized human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
What process informed the content of this Action Plan?
The content is based on a series of open dialogues and collective intelligence processes undertaken with over 1,000 stakeholders across 100 countries who voluntarily participated in CODES consultations.
This process involved two structured roundtables, a two-day global conference and a series of online consultations to capture a diverse range of perspectives and priorities. These were then synthesized into the Action Plan in multiple iterations by the CODES co-champions.
As part of the development of the Action Plan, CODES undertook a stakeholder mapping exercise to determine which organizations are already working on the three shifts and associated 18 strategic priorities. The results of the mapping are available as a Supplemental Inventory of Initiatives as well as within the Kumu platform and as an Airtable.
UNEA presents a great opportunity to broaden the stakeholder engagement process on the Action Plan, moving beyond the membership of CODES to the full international community to ensure legitimacy, inclusivity and co-ownership. An important part of this international engagement process is to secure core political commitments to the goals of the Action Plan, including the identification of different leadership roles.
What is the role of digital technologies in environmental sustainability?
Digital technologies are globally pervasive - they increase productivity, disrupt pre-existing business models and lead to diverse innovations with profound implications for the future of humanity. They can be used to measure and track sustainability progress, optimize the use of resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable a more circular economy. Digital technologies also enable innovation and collaboration.
For example, Artificial intelligence (AI), additive manufacturing and digital twins are some of the powerful tools enabling the next wave of climate change solutions. Internet of Things (IoT) enabled sensors, blockchain-based authentication, data-sharing platforms and gamified applications are examples of technologies that foster collaboration across the value chain and align participants on common metrics and goals.
While digitalization has enormous potential to support sustainability progress, currently it primarily enables or encourages unsustainable practices that continue to degrade natural systems, entrench inequality, and undermine human well-being.
Accelerating sustainability with digital technologies will not happen without deliberate decisions and actions. This Action Plan recommends three Impact Initiatives for each Shift as action items that can be undertaken to progress a sustainability-driven digital revolution.
Taken together, these nine Impact Initiatives would form the enabling framework needed to meet the strategic priorities and progress through each of the Shifts described.
Broadly, the Impact Initiatives entail:
What will CODES do to contribute to the attainment of these three shifts?
The Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age identifies three Shifts, with six Strategic Priorities and three Impact Initiatives per Shift, that must be addressed in accordance with UNEP’s 2022-2025 strategy to use digital transformation to tackle climate change, loss of nature and pollution.
CODES will contribute to these fundamental shifts in four main ways: 1) convene and connect a global community of common purpose to advance these shifts; 2) identify enabling policies and systemic transformations towards all 18 strategic priorities; 3) promote impact initiatives to ensure that actions for each strategic priority are progressed concurrently: and 4) foster and demonstrate political leadership in advocating and realizing actions.
What are the next steps?
Following the presentation at UNEA, the CODES co-champions will organize a series of international consultations with countries and other stakeholders to collect further feedback on the Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age.
The Action Plan will be finalized in May and launched at the Stockholm+50 conference in June. The goal is to secure a series of international commitments and pledges to the Action Plan in order to drive forward the three shifts.
Feedback on the current draft of the Action Plan can be sent to CODES@un.org until 31 March 2022.
