Sustainable development in danger: My message for UN economic and social coordination

By Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General

Central to the sustainable development agenda set out by the United Nations for 2030 is the promise to leave no one behind.

For the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), this means leaving no one offline.

We can glean where we are in world’s digital transformation from the latest ITU numbers. They show strong global growth in Internet use. The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw the largest annual growth in a decade in the world’s total number of Internet users.

But that is only one part of the story.

Of the estimated 2.9 billion people who are still offline, 96 per cent are living in developing countries.

Wide digital gender gaps remain in least developed and landlocked developing countries. And globally, people in urban areas remain twice as likely to use the Internet as those in rural areas.

In short, achieving the SDGs will be practically impossible – as long as people’s ability to connect remains so profoundly unequal within and between countries.

Progress towards key goals

The pandemic has thrown connectivity sharply into the spotlight. The pivotal role of digital technologies during this crisis offers proof of what is possible.

Despite COVID-19, ITU has made strides in education, climate action, and global health – three key aspects of sustainable development.

Take Giga, the global ITU-UNICEF initiative to connect every school to the Internet. Giga has already mapped over 1 million schools in 41 countries, and we are just getting started. ITU and UNICEF now seek to launch a USD 5 billion Connectivity Bond to accelerate critical infrastructure investments. I warmly congratulate UNICEF’s new Executive Director, Catherine Russell, and welcome the prospect of further cooperation between our two agencies on digital development for the good of children worldwide.

The worsening climate crisis touches on another of ITU’s core competencies: international technical standards. With tech use surging, ITU has adopted a ground-breaking standard detailing the emission-reduction trajectories needed to cut the information and communication technology (ICT) sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent, in line with the climate targets set out in the Paris Agreement.

When it comes to health, our efforts to accelerate progress towards the SDGs are part of a broader commitment to advance new and emerging technologies for all – from helping develop 5G networks to partnering with the World Health Organization in a dedicated Focus Group to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for health.

Just this week, ITU launched the AI for Good Neural Network, a new community platform – itself powered by AI – whose aim is to facilitate partnerships and ramp up global collaboration on AI use to drive sustainable development.

Ensuring shared benefits

The challenge before all of us is to ensure that the benefits of new technologies, including AI, 5G and numerous others, are distributed widely and shared fairly across the world.

This question of how was also at the centre of the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum two months ago, where more than 400 top global representatives from the public and private sectors endorsed these technologies as essential to achieve the SDGs.

ITU will further strengthen its efforts through three major conferences in 2022— the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA), the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) and the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 (PP-22).

As we continue seeking new forms of collaboration, ITU has launched several more projects with sister UN agencies – like UNESCO for e-learning and ILO for digital skills for youth in Africa.

We also mobilize our diverse membership of governments, companies, and academia around global, regional, and national regulatory and administrative projects. Saudi Arabia, during its G20 Presidency, stressed digital priorities, bringing ITU together with G20 health, digital economy, and finance ministers.

Envisioning the future

My personal vision draws on the strength of four fundamental principles – what I call the “4 Is”: Investment, Infrastructure, Innovation, and Inclusiveness.

Infrastructure must cover everybody and bring new technologies to everyone. Investment – mainly from the private sector – is a matter of urgency, not just a long-term goal. Innovation is a source of new ideas and a way to make the best use of limited resources. The last “I” inclusiveness, is related to my message on investment: we need a new, whole-of-government strategy.

We should not leave each ecosystem to make their investment alone, because ICT is cross-sectoral. If we work together, all benefit.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) –  an important part of ITU’s business – encapsulate this vision. A huge source of innovation, SMEs are everywhere. ITU has launched a project to engage SMEs in our mainstream of technology development and standardization process. We must redouble efforts to support them, and narrow the gap separating developed from developing countries.

An opportune year

This year offers the opportunity to move ahead on all these fronts.

On 15 March, the 2022 edition of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum will begin. The past decade saw WSIS mobilize stakeholders worldwide – who have in turn benefitted from ICT infrastructure and digital development. Still, the Forum’s goals have yet to be fully achieved, so we must remain steadfast in our efforts.

WTDC, set for June, will aim to harness the unprecedented political will for digital access, forge a bold new development agenda, and put digital technologies at the heart of every nation’s future growth and prosperity.

This unprecedented meeting line-up will conclude with PP-22, setting the direction of digital transformation for years to come.

The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) also increasingly promotes ICTs, creating strong potential for future cooperation.

Let us reinforce our efforts to make 2022 the year where tech can help defeat the virus, accelerate progress on the SDGs, and build a more sustainable and connected future for all.

Based on remarks by Secretary-General Zhao at a panel of the ECOSOC Coordination Segment. Other panellists were Catherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); Mansour Al-Qurashi, General Manager for International Affairs of the Communications and Information Technology Commission of Saudi Arabia; and Takeshi Hikihara, Permanent Representative of Japan to the UN in Vienna.

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