Page 11 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Executive summary

This report defines frontier technologies as new, innovative and disruptive technologies. It explores
the vast potential of frontier technologies to help assess, mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Leveraging these technologies to engineer new solutions to address climate change represents a
significant opportunity to accelerate efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13: ‘Take
urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts,’ especially at the city level.

Several UN bodies have worked closely on this report, including: the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); UN
Environment; United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); United Nations
Global Compact; United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); United Nations
Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat); United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the
Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) and with the support of the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE). This report collates observations from the real-world deployment
of eight key emerging technologies in tackling climate change: artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of
Things (IoT), 5G, clean energy technology, digital twins, robotics, Space 2.0 technologies, as well as
digitalization and Big Data within cities and urban regions.

The applications of these technologies are wide ranging and include addressing: the effects of
compromised air quality on public health, the long-term outcomes of the increasing levels of carbon
dioxide, greenhouse gases and air pollutants, the ramifications of water shortages and loss through
supply network and infrastructure inefficiencies, the wide-ranging consequences of fossil fuel
consumption, the costs associated with increasing disaster risk stemming from natural, man-made
and technological hazards, the implications of biodiversity loss, the global consequences of sea level
rise, and climate change-related threats to global food security. Indeed, the transformative potential
of frontier technologies is so significant that the UN is calling for public and private sector actors to
join forces to build a digital ecosystem for the planet. The technologies covered by this report are
defined briefly in Box 1.

The report has concluded that, although still considered frontier or emerging, the eight technologies
covered by this report offer real and innovative solutions to meet the needs of the world’s population,
while addressing some of the needs of our planet. Continual assessment of the potential of emerging
technologies and scalable deployment of existing frontier solutions should play a part in any city’s
resilience strategy. Introducing these technologies could bring about concrete results for city authorities
and for local populations. Buy-in from, and investments by, governments are critical to ensuring the
continued progression and proliferation of frontier technologies for fighting climate change and
improving the response. Lastly, due to their reliance on IoT and AI, ensuring the affordable and wide-
scale deployment of these two particular emerging technologies will spur further advancements in
and wider adoption of all other frontier technologies to combat climate change. It is hoped that the
findings and conclusions of this report will be valuable in stimulating further research into the success
of frontier technologies to combat climate change, especially at the local or city level.

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