ICT and Sustainable

development
Presented by Pr Mohammed HARRAG
 What is Sustainable Development?
Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most
frequently quoted definition is from Our Common Future, also known as the
Brundtland Report:[1]

"Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.

It contains within it two key concepts:

the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to
which overriding priority should be given; and
the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.
“http://www.iisd.org/sd/
 THE GLOBAL CHALLENGE FOR GOVERNMENT
TRANSPARENCY: THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
GOALS (SDG) 2030 AGENDA

 In 2015, 195 nations agreed with the United

Nation that they can change the world for
the better.
 This will be accomplished by bringing together
their respective governments, businesses,
media, institutions of higher education, and
local NGOs to improve the lives of the people in
their country by the year 2030.
HERE’S THE 2030 AGENDA:
 THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

1. Eliminate Poverty
2.Erase Hunger
3. Establish Good Health and Well-Being
4. Provide Quality Education
5. Enforce Gender Equality
6. Improve Clean Water and Sanitation
7. Grow Affordable and Clean Energy
8. Create Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Increase Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
10. Reduce Inequality
11. Mobilize Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Influence Responsible Consumption and Production
13. Organize Climate Action
14. Develop Life Below Water
15. Advance Life On Land
16. Guarantee Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
17. Build Partnerships for the Goals
 ICT and development

Information and communications Technology (ICT)

is viewed both a means and an end for
development:
During 1995-2002, US economy overall growth 1/3
of its productivity was attributed to the ICT.
 ICT AS AN ACCELERATOR FOR
ACHIEVING THE SDGS

 To keep the ICT revolution in perspective, it is important

to understand what has been achieved to date, and
what lies ahead. The Information Age dates back to the
conceptual breakthroughs of
 Gödel, Turing, and Von Neumann in the 1930s and
1940s,
 and to the first vacuum-tube-based computers of the
late 1940s, yet it was the invention of the transistor in
1947 and of the integrated circuit in 1958 that truly
created the Information Age.
 ICT’S VALUE TOWARDS THE MDGS

ICT’s value towards the MDGs is in gathering,

storing, and analysing information with greater
and geater accuracy and granularity.
This enables tailoring development efforts to suit
specific social, economic, gender, age, and
geographic conditions and requirements.
 ICT important place in SD:

Yes for ICT is a crucial means for sustainabilty;

but, the question that was posed:
what comes first? Is it affordability or
availability?
 ICT CHALLENGES:

 More issues are raised when we use the ICT in

sustainabilty: awareness, availabilty,
accessibilty and affordibility.
 to reduce these Digital Divides there should be
an improvement in all the dimentions of ICT i.e.

computing, connectivity, content and capacity.

 This report was conducted by a team from the Earth
Institute at Columbia University in collaboration with
Ericsson.
Under the lead of the Director of the Earth Institute,
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs,

the entire public sector, including service delivery in health, education, and
infrastructure, is fully supported by high-quality ICT systems. This includes:

Broadband connectivity of all public facilities by 2020

ICT training of all relevant public officials and service providers

ICT-based delivery systems for health care, education, and infrastructure

Deployment of the Internet of Things (remote sensing and control of

connected devices) for the public infrastructure and environmental
management
Encouragement of universities to scale up education and incubation of ICT
solutions, including through partnerships with the business sector
 HISTORICAL EVENT
« The demand that countries pursue policies
aimed at achieving ‘sustainable development’
or ‘sustainability’ has become a clarion call for
many over the past two decades.
Among these are the publication of
Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), the Earth
Summit in 1992 and more recently, the World
Summit in 1992…COP 2018 in Buenos Aires
to this end, a huge amount of literature has
been generated…
 NO AGREED UPON THEORY UPON
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:

… It would be quite wrong to claim that there is a

unified theory of sustainable development.
Well-connected with Brundtland Report, it is
viewed as serving many different (and possibly
competing) goals:
development, a better environment (cop22 in
Marrakech 2016, Cop 24 In Buenos Aires 2018)
and a particular concern for human well-being both
now and in the future.
 GENERAL DEFINITION

Several authors cite the famous Brundtland

Report defintion- that
SD‘development that meets the needs of the
present generation without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’ (WCED, 1987, p.43)

(i.e.World Commission on Environment and

Development)
 The sustainable development problematic
concern is to answer this question?

What is of interest in human well-being and how to

sustain that well-being over time?
To reiterate, a core element of sustainability is the
appropriate management of a broadly construed
portfolio of capital and wealth,
including natural and environmental resources, by
the current generation.
 PUBLIC POLICIES TO MOBILIZE ICTS FOR THE
SDGs
The global diffusion of ICTs to date has largely been market driven.
Mobile subscriptions reached 7 billion people this year not through
the public provision of phones and subscriptions but largely through
competitive, profit-driven market forces. Yet we should also
remember and emphasize that the
 “upstream” technological revolution that made all of this possible
was strongly supported by government.
 Every major ICT advance of the past 75 years—computer design
and science, semiconductors and solid-state physics, integrated
circuitry, fiber optics, microwave transmission, satellite
communications, packet switching and the Internet, and much more
—depended on government support via public financing of R&D,
early government procurements…
 These key government-backed technologies had matured
sufficiently for commercialization, was the private sector well placed
to achieve the stunning successes of scale.
 THE BAU TRAJECTORY, BASED ON PRIVATE-SECTOR-LED
GROWTH VRS PUBLIC SERVICES

 they, will not achieve the BAU trajectory, based on private-

sector-led growth sustainable Development Goals.
 That is because the SDGs aim for universal access to high-
quality public services—such as quality healthcare and
public education, and safe and reliable infrastructure.
 Universal access will be achieved for those services only if
governments skillfully and actively embrace the ICT
revolution, and deliver public services using the massive
benefits of ICTs.
 The public-sector uptake of ICTs will be far less automatic
than the private-sector uptake in the past. Governments will
have to overturn existing practices to make way for ICT
applications and systems.
sustainable development is two types:

-weak sustainability is that there is no place

for the environment.

-Strong sustainability, by contrast, requires

that the environment is accorded explicit
and special protection.
 Large population’s threat to S.D

The population growth may further threaten

sustainability as human populations place
added pressure on natural assets… as with so
many other issues in the sustainable
development area, it is mediated to a large
extent by institutions and polical regime. Put
another way, bad policies or poor institutional
arrangements can exacerbate the environment
impacts of population pressure.
 Growth, consumption and natural wealth

Another important node for research into the

economic, social and environmental performance
of developing countires is the classical process of
structural change, whether the importance of the
(rural) primary sector in a national economy
decreases at the expense of the (urban)
manufacturing and service sectors.
 More consumption = more pollution (carbon
dioxide emission)
Raising consumption is one objective of
development policy around the world. For a large
number of countries, where poverty is
widespread, this is a necessity.
In wealthy countries, in some quarters, there has
been a fair degree of soul-searching about the
desirability of progress driven by an ever-
increasing consumption.
 How do we know whether overall we are on a
sustainable development?

Sustainable development is to be judged against

the reality of performance.
But development can not be sustainable if policy
makers continue to relie on the same narrow set
of economic indicators used to guide the short-
term management of the macroeconomy, most
notably GDP.
 DEFINITION of 'Gross Domestic Product - GDP

 Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value

 of all the finished goods and services produced within
a country's borders in a specific time period.
 Though GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis,
it can be calculated on a quarterly basis as well. GDP
includes all private and public consumption,
government outlays, investments and exports minus 
imports that occur within a defined territory. Put
simply, GDP is a broad
measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity.
DEFINITION OF 'GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT - GDP

Gross domestic product can be calculated using the

following formula:
GDP = C + G + I + NX
Where C is equal to all private consumption, or consumer
spending, in a nation's economy, G is the sum of
government spending, I is the sum of all the country's
investment, including businesses capital expenditures and
NX is the nation's total net exports, calculated as total
exports minus total imports (NX = Exports - Imports).
Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp
Two international organisations pursue
sustainable development:

United Nations and the World Bank

What do you think?
 Agriculture:

Among the locals and the internationals, it is

highly desirable for the global agricultural
system to be sustainable in terms of fulfilling
the multinutritional needs of the world’s
population both now and in the future.
 S.D: A CONCERN OF THE WORLD

A further concern that arises is whether the

understandable desire of the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) to remove trade barriers in
the guise of environmental protection punishes
‘bad’ and ‘good’ environment actions in equal
measures?
 FINANCING IS A REAL PROBLEM:

A major source of friction in international

discussions on sustainable development
surrounds the question of whether the
programme requires additional and
substantional financing.
Accepting this is the case, there is doubt over
whether the necessary international transfer of
funds will be forthcoming.
 ACCESS IS A SEVERE BOTTLENECK FOR
INCREASED ICT USE:

Access means more opportunities

Access– information—knowledge– opportunity.

Affordability is a prime factor in the digital

divide (expensive hardware and software).
 RECOMMENDATIONS:

In the long run, ICT must provide value and be sustainable
from both a user and a provider perspective i.e. to avoid
cultural divide.

To succeed and be sustainable, ICT intiatives should go

beyond top-down or centralised (governmental) initiatives to
encompass the many stakeholders and participants.

Many successes come from efforts that involve cross-

sectoral collaboration from the four keys sectors:
government, business, researches in labs and universities,
and civil society organisations.
More insightful researches are supposed to be
conducted in the ICT and other domains to make
the 3rd millinium goals and objectives within
grasp.
Power and electricity infrastructure should be
affordable and available then comes the ICT and
its role in sustainabilty.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION