 A warm welcome to all VISTA stakeholders from all over the world who are listening in today. We are doing the part two of the dialogue on VISTA's Action Lines and SDG Matrix, and I have here with me Mr. Matias Kern from the Basel Convention, UNEP, and Orhan Osami from the ITU. They are focal points and co-facilitators of the Action Line e-Environment. Hello, Matias. Environment protection is an extremely important component of the SDGs. How does e-Environment contribute to that? Environment is affected by a lot of end-of-life e-products, unfortunately, and we have to ensure that the positive sides of the ITC, ICT sector, is not affecting, on the other side, negatively, the environment. As ICT technology is growing exponentially, which is for a big benefit for the development of many countries, at the same time the e-waste is also the fastest growing waste stream internationally right now. At the moment we are estimating 40 million tons of e-waste annually from end-of-life computing equipment, so we have to ensure that these amounts are primarily reduced, or if we have to recycle them, they have to be handled in an environmentally sound manner and not just dumped somewhere in the environment. Thank you, Matias. Orhan, ICTs play an important role in the disaster risk management. What is your opinion on that and how does that relate to the SDGs? I think, as you know, ICTs play an important role in our daily lives and especially when it comes to disaster, we have different phases of disaster. So if you look at the ICTs, they are very important in sending alerts on time so people can never quit and save their lives. At the same time, ICTs are important and telecommunications are important during the response time, so basically to coordinate the efforts of saving lives and other related matters. Thank you. Action line C6E environment links to the SDGs 9, 11, 13, 14 and 15. How can this action line contribute to the implementation of the SDGs? Action line C7E environment, so practically the action line activities, whatever is happening, we are creating awareness, we are making issues more aware to different communities, especially in this regard when it comes to the environment, the ICT community has to be aware of what are the positive sides and risks about using ICTs and so on. So basically creating awareness, creating a forum for partnerships, so it's something which is really good at this action line and it helps a lot. I think maybe Matthias can add a few words on this. Yes, the SDG on sustainable consumption for instance, it's an easy goal to address for instance we have to think on how to use the e-products and the moment the lifetime or the replacement of mobile phones and laptops is about two, maximum three years. But if we think that the lifetime of a computer is much more, in the moment there is only 20% of the potential of a laptop from the battery side and from the hardware side is used. So if we could extend the amount of the productive life of an IT equipment to say four, five, six years, that would already bring a big advantage and serve the SDG on sustainable consumption. Thank you very much indeed Matthias. We would now move to the Action Line Facilitator of C5. It's Mr. Preetam Maloor from the International Telecommunications Union. ITU is the sole facilitator of Action Line C5. Hello Preetam, welcome. Any reference to ICTs is incomplete without talking about building confidence and security in its use. Can you elaborate on your impressions of the recognition of the fact in the SDG's WISIS linkage matrix? Thank you Gitanjali and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about Action Line C5 which I use the sole facilitator of. Back in 2000 when the world community was defining the MDGs, you know, one in 15 people were online and that was also primarily in the western world. Barely anyone had a cell phone. So it's not surprising that when you're defining the SDG's, ICTs was really not on the radar. So you see very little references to ICTs. First forward 2015, no, there are more cell phones than people in the world. Internet is now a global public good. It's recognized as a global public resource. The word cyber is probably one of the most common prefixes used. So you would assume that ICTs would appear everywhere when you're defining the SDGs, the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. But strangely it's not so. And probably one of the reasons is ICTs are so pervasive that people think you really don't need to define those explicitly in the SDGs. So from the MDGs in 2000 to the SDGs in 2015, life has essentially come a full circle. But anyway, that apart, when ITU as the Action Line Facilitator for C5 was doing the mapping exercise, mapping the goals and sub-goals of Action Line C5 security with the SDGs, we realized that if it's accepted that ICTs are an enabler, is a tool for achieving a large number if not all of the SDGs, then it's also clear that you need to have trust and confidence in using the tool. So with this logic, it's very clear that if you do the mapping exercise, many, many of the goals and sub-goals, even by a conservative estimate, would be directly relevant when you consider security in the use of ICTs. Thank you. Are there any specific issues that you would like to highlight as being particularly important among the SDGs in this respect? There are quite a few, but I'd like to highlight the issue of protection of children and young people online, because you see a reflection of the importance of youth, of children in many of the SDGs, the goals and the sub-goals. And it's important to remember that the online component here is just as important as the offline component, because the children, the youth now are digital citizens. They've been born with ICTs, not like the previous generation who had to get used to it. For example, if I look at, excuse me for paper, which I dropped, but if you look at Goal 16.2, it's end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children. Clearly, here the online child sexual abuse content should be treated within the same framework. And this goes for several other examples also. Thank you very much. Security is extremely important in today's time with the extensive use of information and communication technologies. Thank you, Pritam. We have the privilege of Mr. Cedric Washholz joining us today. He's the coordinator of WISIS in UNESCO. And UNESCO facilitates six action lines, C3 access, C7E learning, C7E science, C8 culture, C9 media, and C10 ethics. Cedric, is there any particular action lines from the matrix that can be seen as contributing most to the implementation of the SDGs? For example, C3 access. Thank you, potentially. Thank you for this opportunity for us to contribute to this exercise. UNESCO has in 2014 and 15 implementing some 583 activities to implement the WISIS outcomes, so I haven't classified how many of these activities will directly contribute to the SDGs. You mentioned C3 access. And C3 access is actually the action line on access to information and knowledge. For us UNESCO, it is not only access to connectivity and infrastructure. It's not access to information and knowledge includes a lot more than the hardware component. And it is therefore also about the empowerment of people to use technologies, for example, addressing challenges in terms of multilingualism, disabilities, it's also linked to access. And it's true, if you have such a broad definition of access to information and knowledge, it does actually cross across all SDGs. Because very much of the SDG goals are linked to the building of capacity of people to learning and to access to information and knowledge. So it's true, access to information and knowledge is a great cross cutting action line, which will fully contribute to all SDGs. Thank you, Cedric. Several UNESCO action lines connect to goal for, for example, equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning. How can action lines contribute to the implementation of this goal? So I think it is actually also, again, a quite cross cutting action line contributing to different goals. But if you look at these SDGs, actually this SDG, it has actually seven sub goals. And some of them link directly also to other action lines. My colleague from UNCTED is facilitating the e-business action line. And if you look at the SDG four goal you just mentioned on education, it includes, for example, to educate youth and train them on becoming entrepreneurial, to get vocational training and skills in order to get jobs in the future. And that, for example, is an immediate opportunity to cooperate. For us, we have it quite easy also to cooperate and work across different action lines because UNESCO is facilitating six, so a third of all action lines. And if you again look at the goal four you just mentioned, it includes also the goal, the sub goal of appreciating cultural diversity. So our cultural action line contributes directly to this goal, sustainable development goal four or two. And so there are a number of sub goals within this education goal where we have the opportunity to cooperate with other international organizations but also across our different action lines. Thank you very much, Cedric. Thank you for joining us today. We now move to Mr. Turbion Fredriksen. He is the action line facilitator for e-business, Action Line C7 e-business. And in fact, this action line is also co-facilitated by UPU and ITC. This is correct. Thank you also for this excellent opportunity to share some of our findings after this useful mapping exercise that we have undertaken to look at the links between WISIS Action Lines and the STGs. And maybe I should just mention something about what e-business is all about because we often talk about how ICT can support different areas of development. But in order for developing countries to really make use, effective use of ICTs, they need to have their own capabilities in the ICT sector. And that's very much what e-business is all about. So one aspect of e-business is how to strengthen the local ICT sector in developing countries. There are other is how to enhance the use of ICT in the local business sector and also outside of the ICT sector in developing countries. So that means that it can affect many parts of the STGs and many parts of the WISIS Action Lines as well. Definitely. Importance of employment and job creation is highlighted in the SDGs. How does the e-business Action Line address this? Well, it comes in many different ways because productivity increases is a very important element of this and by helping small and micro enterprises to make better use of ICTs, we can help them to become more productive. By helping small and micro enterprises to make use of the internet, for example, in order to sell and buy their products, they can reach greater sales and they may be able to lower the cost of inputs. Another aspect is, of course, to promote women's entrepreneurship. If we have a look at the specific challenges that women entrepreneurs in developing countries face, and many of those challenges can be overcome by effective use of ICTs. In addition to that, we have very dynamic ICT sectors growing now in developing countries, which often offer special youth employment opportunities, especially for the skilled youth. So there are many aspects of this that are coming through when you start mapping the Action Line with the STGs. Of course, this leads to my third question because this shows that the Action Line contributes to poverty eradication, which is a very important aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals. What are your views on that? This is true. Ultimately, this is the goal of the development work that we should be able to reduce poverty. We see this mainly as a way to improve the livelihoods of poor people in rural areas in particular, but also in urban slums. And the ICT can make a big difference there, and not least by empowering the smallholder farmers, rural enterprises and micro enterprises to actually find new job opportunities, new revenue sources, and thereby better livelihoods and ultimately less poverty. Thank you very much, Torbjorn. And I hope that we are successful with the implementation of the Action Lines for furthering the goals of the SDGs. Thank you very much. I have here with me my colleague, Mr. Taka, Yuki Sugomoto. He is the Action Line facilitator for ICT infrastructure. So ICT infrastructure is all-pervasive and business Action Lines are actually dependent on ICT infrastructure. It has to be proper infrastructure to be able to do things related to ICTs. So my first question to you, Taka, would be ICT infrastructure is crucial for the implementation of business Action Lines. How can Action Lines C2 help achieve the SDGs or help fasten the implementation of the SDGs? So the business Action Line C2 can help achieving the sustainable development goals by finding out what are the barriers such as regulatory infrastructure, affordability, usage, and we can have and suggest solutions such as private and public partnerships and affordable equipment and so on. So if everybody could be able to access the internet, for instance, they can use the new and innovative services such as online shopping, e-ticketing, mobile banking, you can name it, there is much more, and they can have everything will be cheaper, faster, and moreover, there will be no difference in living in a city of a developed country or living in a remote village in a developing world. So having a broad and secure broadband access, the world will be much better tomorrow. Thank you. Nowadays, access to the internet is a new basic service necessary for all people. However, statistics show that there is a huge gap between the developing and the developed world, which needs to be addressed. How can Action Line C2 address that gap and which goals, in your opinion, which SDG goals is that linked to? Oh, yes. First of all, I would like to say that we think that we did a great job, actually, starting from the first visit, which was 2003. So the world is now covered with mobile networks. So even in the developing world, the mobile penetration rate is almost 100%. So everybody has a mobile phone in their hands. So covering the world with internet access, it is a big challenge. However, we believe that it is actually possible. And that is exactly what is written in the Sustainable Development Goal. I think it's Goal 9, Resilient Infrastructure, and Goal 919A9C, which if I summarize, it should be Sustainable Development of Infrastructure for Economic Development, and particularly having the internet access and ICT infrastructure in the least development countries by 2020. So Action Line C2 is collecting the best case studies so that people can learn and take out the findings. We are having direct assistance, for instance, wireless broadband network developments and emergency relief. Also, we are doing some mapping of the broadband backbones, which you can find out the missing links and the opportunities. And I think we shouldn't forget that we are having an annual meeting here in the WSIS Forum. And for the development of ICT infrastructure in the developing world, it is very important that all sectors cooperate, regulatory people, government, private, industry, and maybe the civil society. And so it is very important for them, each other to see, know, and understand each other. And only through those collaborations are those goals, Sustainable Development Goals, will be fulfilled. So if you are a part of the ICT infrastructure builders, please join us. We have plenty of work to do, and it can be done without your collaboration. Thank you, Takah Yuki Sugimoto. He is the facilitator of the Action Line C2, ICT infrastructure, and ITU is the sole facilitator of this Action Line. So as we have seen in the two dialogues in two parts for the WSIS Action Lines and SDG Matrix, SDGs have a direct and clear linkage with the WSIS Action Lines and vice versa. We have heard from the experts today, from the WSIS Action Line facilitators, from the different UN agencies, and we welcome you to please visit our website, www.wises.org slash SDGs, where you can read the entire document and see the WSIS and SDGs mapping and matrix exercise. We thank you very much, and we hope you enjoyed this. Thank you.