The e-DIRAP Hangout on Climate Change and ICTs was held on Thursday, 20 June 2013. View the written summary of the Hangout at http://digitalreview.asia/resources/google-hangout-on-climate-change-and-icts HIGHLIGHTS ICTs have an essential role to play in: a) Climate monitoring and modeling to help decision-makers assess climate change impacts and prepare plans that take these impacts into consideration. b) Helping people, communities and organizations adapt to the changing climate and deal with its impacts. c) Mitigating or reducing the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) released into the atmosphere by enabling energy efficiencies. Challenges and the way forward: a) Dealing with individuals or institutions that are resistant to using ICTs or to sharing information are common challenges. If individuals are not enabled to understand how technologies can be useful, it will be difficult to get the institutions to move ahead. The transformational leap to make greater use of ICTs for climate action or other purposes (for e-governance or for e-commerce) depends on: government's support for the diffusion of ICTs and of new ideas; creation of an enabling environment for innovation, research and development; investments in ICTs and ICT applications; and provision of an open business environment. If a country has these conditions, people will see the need to acquire the relevant ICT skills because it then becomes a business opportunity as well as a development need. The openness to new ideas and ways of doing things is important and underpins the ability to harness ICTs for not only national development but also for individual's professional development and self-fulfillment. b) Grassroots organizations will probably be making use of ICTs, particularly the Internet and social media, to discuss solutions to climate change issues. It will be a conflict laden process particularly if ICTs reach the frontliners who are feeling the effects of climate change. Some governments in Asian countries are regulating or planning to regulate the Internet, which may cut out feedback from these frontliners. c) Social media plays an important role in tackling climate change challenges through its popularity and access via mobile phones. Social media such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and YouTube can be used to share information and obtain rapid feedback, as well as for social marketing. It can also be used for crowdsourcing and data collection of location information and status updates. Waze is a crowdsourced traffic mapping and navigation application for mobile phones where individuals can report real-time traffic updates and provide routing suggestions. Individuals can also report accidents, traffic jams and speed traps, and can update roads, landmarks, house numbers, etc. d) In the use of ICTs in early warning systems, it is not uncommon that towers, dart buoys and automated weather stations are vandalized or have parts stolen. It is therefore important for institutions setting up the system to get local communities living around the different instruments of the system to understand their purpose. Volunteers from the communities can be recruited to check and protect the instruments as part of the effort to share the benefits as well as the costs. e) e-Waste is a challenge. The uncontrolled discarding or inappropriate waste management generates significant hazardous emissions, with severe impacts on human health and the environment. f) One of the difficulties of adopting ICTs is their costs (not only the short-term costs but also the long-term costs of maintenance and updating). Thus, it is important to promote open source and open content. Maps and satellite data and images are expensive and beyond the reach of many governments, but there are initiatives to provide them for free or at lower costs. g) ICTs need not be cutting edge or high-tech. It is important to make use of simple and readily accessible technology. For example in rural and remote communities, 2G mobile communications, SMS-based applications and radio are more prevalent and will probably have the greatest impact. It is also important that the type of information provided and applications developed are relevant to the local context and associated with local climate action. Panelists - Richard Labelle, ICT4D Consultant, Canada - Changsub Shim, Research Scientist, Korea Adaptation Center for Climate Change, Korea Environment Institute, Republic of Korea - Chin Saik Yoon, Founder and Publisher, Southbound, Malaysia - Manoj Kumar Gupta, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Kathmandu University, Nepal - Gabrielle Iglesias, Project Officer, Climate Change and Climate Risk Management Department, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, Thailand e-DIRAP Team: Christine Apikul and Khairil Yusof

• published: 20 Jun 2013
• views: 137