Page 10 - Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change - Executive Summary

Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change

an ice sheet has risen or fallen, ice
sheet elevation and thickness and
also examining how it changes over
the course of one year.

With higher seas already
creating dangerous storm surges
exacerbating flooding or coastal
erosion from the US Gulf Coast to
the Maldives or China, the future
effect on communities in Greenland
is also uncertain, and so the role of
next generation satellites is set to
become increasingly important.

Digitalization and Big Data for leapfrogging traditional pathways to help increase agricultural
efficiency and food security

Digitalization, as well as the resultant Big Data it generates, will help across a myriad of sectors
as diverse as agriculture and transport, enhancing operational and supply chain efficiencies,
consolidating information and data from earth observations and making data available to the
right stakeholders in order to facilitate innovation.

In agricultural efficiency and food security terms, any digitalization of the agricultural sector
could help to increase agricultural production by optimizing inputs such as water, while
minimizing undesirable outputs such as CO emissions. The information capital derived from
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Big Data on (for example) weather, soil moisture, mineral levels or maturity of plants and then
transmitted by connected mobile technologies will also alter future jobs within agriculture and
the food production chain.

The report cites the case study of Columbia’s site-specific agriculture project, which pools data
from a multitude of sources including via a phone app for farmers. This local knowledge and
site-specific information, when fed into the computer model, enables scientists to refine their
advice further, helping farmers pinpoint what, when, where and how to plant.

Enabling frontier technologies to achieve the most far-reaching, beneficial results

As the report demonstrates, the potential of frontier technologies as tools to tackle climate
change is clear. And yet, for their rollout and uptake to be as beneficial as possible, some key
themes need to be addressed:
• Buy-in from, and investment by, governments: Critical to ensuring the progress and spread
of frontier technologies, governments have a vital role to play in ensuring cooperation and
spurring innovation within the private sector through economic and legislative incentives
for R&D in frontier technologies.
• Engagement with all stakeholders: A close working relationship between the public and
private or business sectors is essential, as is an engagement with academia and citizen
stakeholders. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are needed in order to leverage private
sector expertise and infrastructure in data science, cloud computing and AI, to share data
and to promote the use of technology for global public goods. Existing partnerships and
practitioner communities should be harnessed to ensure that the digital ecosystem for
the environment is inclusive and does not overlap with, or duplicate, existing activities.

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