 I'm Max Jacobson-Gonzales of ITU, the United Nations Agency for Information and Communication Technology. Welcome to our new podcast series, Technology for Good. Shut it down! We are not alone. It's a global movement around the world. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. This strong message came from young climate activist Greta Thunberg. In this episode, we look at technology and climate change, a key challenge of our time and ever more in the media, from student strikes and demonstrations across the globe to gatherings at the highest level, such as the Climate Action Summit held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where UN Secretary General Antoni Guterres called the leaders of the world to action. It is my obligation, our obligation, to do everything to stop the climate crisis before it stops us. We have the tools. Technology is on our side. Technology. While many blame it as the cause of climate change, is it possible that it may have the answers to reduce climate change and its impacts? Today, we look at two aspects. How artificial intelligence can make a positive change and how information and communication technologies can mean the difference between life and death. Let's start with AI. If we look at trying to get to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it's going to be very, very challenging unless we really accelerate. Benjamin Coombs is a senior economist in the sustainability and climate change team at the business network PricewaterhouseCoopers. He's been focusing on harnessing emerging technologies for the environment. How AI in particular can help to reduce greenhouse emissions. We've got a number of serious challenges that require urgent attention from public to private sector, international organizations, big tech firms, thinking about how can we use AI for those environmental challenges from biodiversity to climate change to oceans. And what we found is that there are over 150 use cases already out there in the market of people using AI for the environment across environmental challenges. Coombs' team's findings could be regarded by many as surprising. They contradict common economic assumptions and show that there could be genuine financial benefit from fighting climate change. Benjamin Coombs runs the numbers. Using AI in four sectors, agriculture, energy, water and transport can really unlock economic value of $5 trillion by 2030, increase GDP by 4% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4%, which is the equivalent of Australia, Canada and Japan combined in terms of those emissions. We have nothing. Everything is dry. This is why I am collecting these green leaves in order to survive. When you have a drought or when you have a famine, you need to intervene before the shock arrives, just before. Yves D'Accord, the Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, is very familiar dealing with crises around the world, many of which are ever increasing due to climate change. One of the things which happened typically in the 70s and 80s, the international community invested too late when they started to do that. It was already too late. What AI would have done totally differently, it would have empowered people differently, not so much us, but the power of the people. And people would have certainly models which will allow them to be much more aware about, in fact, if drought would come. So it will help them to connect about the numbers of animals, what it means to water by day. So it would bring them a lot of data and not just data for their own family, but data for the community and the country. Let's hear it from an academic perspective. If we don't solve the problem now, we will have to muck with the mess after the drastic effects of climate change hit these populations. And by drastic, I mean climate collapse. David Hughes of Pennsylvania State University is part of Plant Village, a non-governmental initiative to help smallholder farms grow more food with the help of technology. Disasters such as droughts due to climate change are threatening small scale or subsistence farmers to even put food on their plates. We're seeing a complete loss of the maize crops in many parts of East Africa at the moment because of the twin cyclones. And we will see hundreds of millions of people become food insecure with a world that is between four and eight degrees Celsius hotter than it is now. The fundamental constraint we have in Africa is the distribution of knowledge for smallholder farmers. So in Kenya where we work, there is one human expert for 3,000 farmers. And we've tried to change that problem for the last 40 years as an international community and we haven't moved the needle. The maize plant for fall army work. That's the sound of an innovative talking app, Nuru, which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and Pennsylvania State University joined forces to develop in order to help African farmers recognize the fall army work, a new and fast-spreading crop pest in sub-Saharan Africa. It enables them to take immediate steps to destroy it and curb its spread. The approach that we're taking is to leverage AI and cloud solutions to enable decision-making in the field by farmers. And so we have tested our AI solution, which diagnoses crop diseases against human experts on the continent and is twice as good as existing human capability. And that's a great prospect. So critically with our AI tool, it works offline, so it's Africa-focused. It is developed and co-developed and designed by African women farmers and it works with African scientists. Alan Horuska from FAO explains how it works. This new assistant will be able to respond to farmers directly. So not only will farmers be able to send data to a global system, national system, global system, but also get advice about how to manage fall army work. So she will talk Nuru. She'll talk to the farmer in local languages. Right now she knows about four languages well, but she'll learn many more through machine learning and be able to talk to farmers, understand their voice questions and respond to them in their local languages. Rosalind in Kenya uses the app, which helps us to manage the crop yields of her farm better. Since I got this phone of Nuru, it has really helped me in my farm to discover what is the army work and also to help my farmers. So how is it going to be scaled up? Where next? Here's David Hughes again. Now, through the United Nations, we are intending to take our tool plant village and roll it out across 70 countries in 20 languages. So there's lots of opportunities here and indeed demonstrated capability that when you have the tool and when you have the partnerships with local organizations and you work with a farmer-centric design, you can solve problems. Droughts are spreading and wildfires are burning. Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary General. Natural disasters are multiplying. Storms everywhere are more intense, more frequent, more deadly. I've seen it with my own eyes, from Dominica to the Sahel to the South Pacific. In May, I went to the Highland Nation of Tuvalu, where I witnessed an entire country fighting for its very existence against the rising seas. Hailing from the Pacific Island of Samoa, Nisa Putai-Prasel is the Acting Secretary General of the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization. She knows full well the threat of climate change and rising disasters. Climate change adaptation is one of my passion. She also knows the vital role that communications have to play in emergency situations. When disaster strikes, the key thing that's needed is communication. And this is where the industry comes in to help governments. There's assistance if it's disasters like hurricanes or cyclones. Of course, some can be in category six that demolishes all the telecommunication and mobile towers. And this is where the satellite comes in, because a good approach, it's to have both satellites and terrestrial communication, telecommunication. Enrico Polcari, Director of Technology and Chief Information Officer of the World Food Programme, is also of the same opinion. Imagine a crisis strikes, a country where there are affected populations who have no access to communications anymore. Communications is vital. It's not only meaningful, it's essential. It's essential both to provide an opportunity for responders to be able to coordinate their activities, to talk to each other, but also to provide the time's life-saving communications to the affected populations. So I will say that it's beyond meaningful. It's essential. Increased disasters due to climate change also impacted Mozambique and the Bahamas in 2019, highlighting the fundamental need for emergency telecommunications. To see what I experienced in Zohar and Mahshaba. Enrico Polcari from WFP again. In Mozambique earlier this year, we were able, through pre-positioned equipment, to be on the ground just a few days after the cyclone, be able to provide connectivity. That was essential to a response, but also to the affected populations. Currently, when in Bahamas, within one day of the event, we were on the ground, equipment was on the ground, and connectivity was restored. It is meaningful, essential, that it works. AI and communications. Just two possible ways of mitigating and adapting to climate change. There is a genuine need and promise for science and technology to partner with public and private initiatives to address climate change and its consequences for people and for communities. But will we use the full potential of technology? Anthony Guterres, UN Secretary-General. But science also tells us it is not too late. We can do it. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is still possible, but it will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society. Benjamin Coombs from PWC's advice is to all join forces. These are such big global problems that we really need to work together to solve these problems together. And I think that as we see that, we will start to see bigger changes happening. We've already seen great advances in healthcare, in finance, using AI. And now's the time to really extend the portfolio of what people are looking at for people and the planet. To wrap it up, here's a final word from UN Secretary-General, Anthony Guterres. The climate crisis is caused by us, and the solutions must come from us. The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win. Our next episode will focus on emergency telecommunications, saving lives before and after disaster strike. So do join us again. For Technology for Good and the ITU, I'm Max Jacobson Gonzalez. Thank you for listening. Technology for Good, an ITU digital production.