Ericsson’s vision of how the ICT sector can help governments meet carbon-reduction targets will be outlined during top-level presentations, meetings and demonstrations this week at the world’s largest annual climate change summit. The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) gathering is underway in Cancún, Mexico.

Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Ericsson’s head of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, has led the company’s COP agenda for the past three years. She says ICT’s potential influence in meeting targets has never been greater.

“While there are not high expectations for reaching consensus on a binding climate change agreement at COP16, we are still confident that for the first time there will be an acknowledgement, from top-level participants, of the role that ICT and transformative solutions can play in addressing climate change,” she says. “I feel this will set the ground for more progressive and proactive forward-thinking climate negotiations during COP16 and beyond.”

Weidman-Grunewald has been working with sustainability issues for more than 15 years, the past 12 years at Ericsson. She says modern broadband-based infrastructure will be pivotal in transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon economy. This is where Ericsson and other ICT sector companies have a huge role to play.

“Our President and CEO Hans Vestberg will participate, via Telepresence, to present the Guadalajara Declaration – the result of an industry-wide initiative to unite the ICT industry in presenting itself as a solution for climate change,” Weidman-Grunewald says.

She says the content and messaging in the declaration – developed together with GeSI (Global e-Sustainability Initiative) and related to one of the recommendations in the report of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development – is significant.

“There is a need to make transformational rather than incremental progress on climate targets,” she says. “Large-scale CO2 reductions require new ways of conducting business and living.”

She says Ericsson will highlight its involvement in projects like Stockholm Royal Seaport during the summit as well as demonstrating how transformative solutions are already making a difference across a range of sectors during the event’s Green Solutions technology fair.

“In addition to the connected city, we will showcase a number of solutions such as the electrical vehicle, the connected home and the weather stations, including an application that will highlight how mobile communications can help in climate adaptation.”

While not downplaying the impact of carbon emissions from ICT companies, Weidman-Grunewald says the sector can not only use its own solutions to improve, but can be invaluable to other sectors.

“We in the ICT sector are responsible for about 2 percent of current global emissions,” she says. “At Ericsson we are working hard every day to reduce that, and have the targets and strategy in place to do so. But we are also an untapped resource for helping to reduce carbon emissions in industries which make up the other 98 percent. We can improve ourselves but we can help others even more.”

About COP

The event is the annual gathering of leading United Nations officials, politicians, environmentalists, industrialists, NGOs and other interested parties, held since 1995 following the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 1994. The COP was founded to assess progress on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which emerged from the groundbreaking 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, otherwise known as the Earth Summit.