Symposium on SDGs and sustainable supply chains in the post-global economy

It was great to participate in today’s symposium on the SDGS and sustainable supply chains in the post-global economy today, convened in the School of Management at Royal Holloway, University of London, by The Centre for Research into Sustainability (CRIS) at Royal Holloway University of London, the University of Twente, and the Greening of Industry Network.  Several of the keynotes and papers specifically addressed the role of ICTs in delivering the SDGs, and enhancing sustainability in supply chains.

Joseph SarkisFollowing an opening by Professor Gloria Agyemang (Head of the School of Management at Royal Holloway, University of London), keynotes were given by Hans Bressers (University if Twente), Diane Holt (University of Essex), Shaun McCarthy (Action Sustainability), Joseph Sarkis (Foisie Business School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Tim Unwin (UNESCO Chair in ICT4D), and Natalia Yakovleva (Newcastle University).  Joseph Sarkis and Tim Unwin both focused specifically on ICTs, sustainability and the SDGS, highlighting both the positive and more problematic aspects of the relationships between technology and sustainable development.

A lively discussion was held during the finger buffet lunch, covering a very wide range of issues relevant to technology, supply chains, and international development, including the importance of the informal economy, the irrelevance of the SDGS, and conceptualising no-growth/low-growth economies.  Afternoon papers were grouped into five tracks:

  • Geopolitical shifts and supply chain contribution to SDGs
  • Social inclusion, CSR and business ethics in cross-border sustainability chains
  • Measuring and reporting to embed sustainability and social inclusion in sustainable supply chains policy and practice
  • Interdependencies and trade-offs between SDGs and the outcomes of environmental practices, social practices and operational practices in supply chains
  • New actors, information sharing and networks.

The Symposium was convened by Diego Vazquez-Brust (a Member of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D), Laura Franco-Garcia, and Lauren McCarthy, to whom many thanks are due.  Details of papers presented at the symposium will be available in due course, but slides from Tim Unwin’s paper are already available at The SDGs, supply chains and the ICT sector: critical reflections.

UNESCO Chair in ICT4D session at WSIS Forum 2017

coverTo coincide with the recent publication of Tim Unwin’s new book entitled Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development (Oxford University Press, 2017), the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is convening a workshop on Friday 16th June (11.00-12.45 in Room Popov 1) at the 2017 WSIS Forum being held in Geneva.  The key premise of the workshop is that the global spread of ICTs has increased inequality, and that the poorest and most marginalised have therefore failed sufficiently to benefit.  The workshop will explore whether the continued focus on the ways through which ICTs can contribute to economic growth will inevitably lead to ever increasing, and dangerous, inequality, and will make recommendations as to how different stakeholders can best ensure that the poorest and most marginalised can indeed benefit from their use.

It will begin with short (5 minute) perspectives from some amazing people (listed in alphabetical order of first names):

  • Alex Wong (Head, Global Challenge Partnerships & Member of the Executive Committee; Head of the Future of the Internet Global Challenge Initiative, World Economic Forum) on The power of partnership
  • Dr. Bushra Hassan (School of Psychology, University of Sussex) on The wisdom of marginalised women
  • Charlotte Smart (Digital Policy and Programme Manager, Department for International Development, UK) on The delivery of donors
  • Michael Kende (Senior Advisor, Analysis Mason, and former Chief Economist of the Internet Society) on The trust in technology
  • Nigel Hickson (VP IGO Engagement, ICANN) on The design of the domain name system
  • Torbjörn Fredriksson (Head of ICT Analysis Section of the Division on Technology and Logistics, UNCTAD) on The energy of entrepreneurship

Following these short, and undoubtedly provocative, presentations there will be an open discussion focusing on participants’ thoughts as to what are the most important priorities for action that different stakeholders must take so that the poorest and most marginalised people and communities can indeed be empowered through the use of ICTs.

The workshop is open to everyone with interests in ways through which ICTs can indeed benefit poor people, and there will also be an opportunity after the workshop for participants to purchase copies of Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development at a 40% reduction from list price.

We very much look forward to seeing you in Geneva at the 2017 WSIS Forum.

Nominations for next DG of UNESCO

This appointment will be crucial for the entire future of UNESCO – so, though, it was worth copying this directly from UNESCO’s site at http://en.unesco.org/news/nine-nominations-received-post-director-general-unesco

Nine Nominations received for the post of Director-General of UNESCO

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UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France
© UNESCO/Ignacio Marin
16 March 2017

Paris –The Chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Mr. Michael Worbs, today officially announced the names of the nine candidates received for the post of Director-General of UNESCO.

The nominees are listed below in the order of receipt of their candidature, within the deadline set by the Executive Board.

Name of candidate

Date complete file received

Proposed by
Mr Polad BÜLBÜLOGLU

 

09.03.2017

Azerbaijan
Mr PHAM Sanh Chau

 

13.03.2017

Viet Nam
Ms Moushira KHATTAB

 

13.03.2017

Egypt
Mr Hamad bin Abdulaziz AL-KAWARI

 

14.03.2017

Qatar
Mr Qian TANG

 

14.03.2017

China
Mr Juan Alfonso FUENTES SORIA

 

15.03.2017

Guatemala
Mr Saleh AL-HASNAWI

 

15.03.2017

Iraq
Ms Vera EL-KHOURY LACOEUILHE

 

15.03.2017

Lebanon
Ms Audrey AZOULAY

 

15.03.2017

France

The Director-General is nominated by the Executive Board and appointed by the General Conference for a period of four years. These nine candidates will be interviewed during the 201st Board session on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 April 2017. The person to be nominated by the Executive Board shall be chosen by secret ballot, during a vote that will take place during the Board’s 202nd session in October 2017. Subsequently, the Chairperson of the Board shall inform the General Conference, during its 39th session in November 2017, of the candidate nominated by the Board. The General Conference shall consider this nomination and then elect, by secret ballot, the person proposed by the Executive Board.

Information pertaining to the candidates, together with the procedure for the nomination of the Director-General of UNESCO, is available on the Executive Board website at: http://en.unesco.org/executive-board/dg-candidates-2017.

PhD project on migration and digital technologies

Delighted to be able to share details of a fully-funded (EU/Home) PhD studentships to be supervised by Dr. Silvia Masiero (an Affiliated Member of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D) and Prof Ravishankar at Loughborough University.  Details are as follows:

PhD project: Forced International Migration and Digital Technologies

Applications are invited for the above studentship commencing 1st October 2017. The Studentship is open to home/EU and international/overseas students. It will run for 3 years, and it includes:

A fee waiver equivalent to the home/EU rate*
Tax-free stipend of £14,553 p.a. for three years
* Please note that international/overseas students will be required to find funding to cover the difference between home/EU fees

Project description

With more than 65 million people worldwide classified as refugees, the world is witnessing one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history. As war, hostility and violence force millions of people to flee their home countries, the global refugee crisis has generated an unprecedented need for new expertise in responding to large-scale humanitarian emergencies.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digital platforms are increasingly seen as helpful in handling the consequences of the global surge in forced international migration. But while extant evidence on the impact of digital tools cluster around short-term emergency management, less is known about their role in dealing with long-term issues of refugee integration.

This PhD project will explore the role of digital technologies in refugee integration, both from the perspective of host governments and social enterprises complementing the efforts of the state. The project aims to draw on in-depth ethnographic approaches to generate valuable knowledge on how ICTs can foster long-term social inclusion, and on the complex relationships connecting digital technologies, social enterprises and wider institutional arrangements.

Supervisors: Professor M. N. Ravishankar and Dr Silvia Masiero

Entry criteria

Masters degree (with average programme mark of no less than 65%) or equivalent. English Language requirement of IELTS band 7.0 or above with not less than 7.0 in each component.

Link to Application: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sbe/research/phd-mphil/studentships/27042017sbe-rmnsm17/

Silvia Masiero’s seminar on big data and poverty in India

Silvia Masiero (Loughborough University, and Affiliated Member of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D) has just finished a fascinating seminar at the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D on The Affordances of Big Data for Poverty Reduction: Evidence from India, which raised many interesting questions about the relative benefits and challenges of biometric data, especially in the context of demonetisation in India.  Slides of the presentation are available here, and her recent ICT4D briefing on the same subject is here.

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The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at the start of 2017

founders-smallThe UNESCO Chair in ICT4D would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our members and colleagues a very successful year ahead in 2017.  Given the events of 2016, the next year seems likely to be highly volatile on the geopolitical front, but hopefully we can all move together effectively to enable more of the world’s poorest and most marginalised to benefit appropriately from ICTs.

To this end, at the start of 2017, we are launching an exciting new series of informal discussions for postgraduates involved in the UNESCO Chair’s activities, entitled Technology and empowerment: multidisciplinary conversations, the first of which will be on 13th January from 1-2 in McCrea 229 at Royal Holloway, University of London.  These are intended for postgraduates working on multidisciplinary aspects of ICT4D, and are open to anyone who is interested.

Two other news items at the start of the year are of interest:

  •  Our first ICT4D briefing of the year, by Silvia Masiero on Big data for anti-poverty policies, is now available.  Please share details widely, and do contact the editor Endrit Kromidha (through our contact page) should you be interested in writing a short briefing this year
  • Silvia will also be presenting a seminar at Royal Holloway, University of London, on 2nd February 2017, at 13.00-14.00 in the Queen’s Building (QB136).  This is entitled The Affordances of Big Data for Poverty Reduction: Evidence from India – do please share details with anyone who might be interested in attending.
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UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at WRS-16

rhul-wrsMembers of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D participated in the ITU’s World Radiocommunication Seminar 2016 (WRS-16) held in Geneva from 12th-16th December 2016. This provided an excellent opportunity to gain detailed updated information on both terrestrial and space services, covering technical and regulatory issues including publications, databases and tools for countries to use in managing radiocommunications.

now-smallIt also enabled us to engage in the kick-off meeting of the Network of Women (NOW) for the World Radiocommunication Conference 2019 (WRC-19) held on 13th December, during which the Chairholder contributed to the panel discussion, speaking on:

  • the big picture of women in the ICT/radiocommunication sector;
  • how to encourage women to take ownership of the group; and
  • the role that ITU should play in supporting this type of action.

As well as participating in the formal aspects of WRS-16 this was also an excellent opportunity to engage with national delegations and participants, especially from Pakistan and Kenya, as well as officials and friends in the ITU to discuss how the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D can further contribute to the ITU’s activities.

The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Telecom World, 2016, Bangkok

teamThe UNESCO Chair in ICT4D featured prominently at the ITU’s Telecom World 2016 held in Bangkok from 13th-17th November, and was a partner of the ITU’s parallel Kaleidoscope academic conference held on the theme of ICTs for a Sustainable World.  Three PhD alumni took an active part in the event: Salma Abbasi (Chairperson and CEO of the e Worldwide Group) who participated especially in connection with her ongoing work on ICTs for development in Nigeria; Sammia Poveda (UNU Computing and Society), who represented UNU-CS primarily in several gender-related events, especially the EQUALS working meeting and the joint session on the gender dimension in international standardization; and Caitlin Bentley (Research Associate at the Singapore Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University) who represented both her present Centre and the UNESCO Chair at Kaleidoscope.

Other activities where the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D was represented included:

  • The ITU Secretary General’s consultation with academia on 13th November, which considered the possible launch of a new ITU journal, an advisory board of academia to the Secretary General, and a platform to strengthen cooperation between the ITU and academia (the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s written contributions)
  • The m-Powering Development Advisory Board meeting held on 13th November

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©ITU/I.Wood

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This was a great opportunity for colleagues in the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D to engage in discussions with those in government, the private sector, civil society and international organisations and to influence policy on ways through which ICTs can contribute to development, especially for some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised.  We are most grateful to colleagues at the ITU for making this possible, and for inviting our participation at ITU Telecom World 2016.

Thanks to the ITU’s official photographer for most of the above images!

Making money from meeting the SDGs? An overarching approach to sustainable development

I am delighted to have been asked to moderate the session on “Making money from meeting the SDGs?” at ITU Telecom World in Bangkok on Monday 14th November (4:45 PM – 6:00 PM, Jupiter 10), although I wonder a little why I have been chosen for this task given my past criticisms of the SDGs!  Perhaps the “?” in the session title will give me a little freedom to explore some of the many challenges and complexities in this theme.  Following in the footsteps of the Millennium Development Goals (2000), the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) still generally focus on the idea that economic growth will eliminate poverty; indeed, they assert that poverty can truly be ended.  This is a myth, and a dangerous one. For those who define poverty in a relative sense, poverty will always be with us.  It can certainly be reduced, but never ended.   It is therefore good to see the SDGs also focusing on social inclusion, with SDG 10 explicitly addressing inequality.  We need to pay much more attention to ways through which ICTs can thus reduce inequality, rather than primarily focusing on their contribution to economic growth, which has often actually led to increasing inequality.

This session will explore the implications of such tensions specifically for the role of ICT businesses in delivering the SDGs.  Key questions to be examined include:

  • How can the ICT sector contribute to accelerating the achievement of the SDGs by providing ICT-enabled solutions and building feasible business models?
  • Is the SDG agenda relevant for the ICT industry?
  • What roles should the ICT industry, and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments in particular, play in working towards the SDGs?
  • Can the SDG framework provide an opportunity to accelerate transformative ICT-enabled solutions around new solutions like big data or IoT?

Underlying these are difficult issues about the ethics of making money from development, and the extent to which the ICT sector is indeed sustainable.  All too often, the private sector, governments and even civil society are now using the idea of “development” to build their ICT interests, rather than actually using ICTs to contribute to development understood as reducing inequalities; we increasingly have “development for ICTs” (D4ICT) rather than “ICTs for development” (ICT4D).  To be sure, businesses have a fundamentally important role in contributing to economic growth, but there is still little agreement, for example, on how best to deliver connectivity to the poorest and most marginalized, so that inequality can be reduced. As my forthcoming book argues, we need to reclaim ICTs truly for development in the interests of the poorest and most marginalized.

We have a great panel with whom to explore these difficult questions.  Following opening remarks by Chaesub Lee (Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU), we will dive straight into addressing the above questions with the following panelists (listed in alphabetical order of first names):

  • Astrid Tuminez (Senior Director, Government Affairs. Microsoft)
  • Lawrence Yanovitch (President of GSMA Foundation)
  • Luis Neves (Chairman Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and Climate Change and Sustainability Officer, Executive Vice President, at Deutsche Telekom Group)
  • Mai Oldgard (Head of Sustainability, Telenor)
  • Tomas Lamanauskas (Group Director Public Policy, VimpelCom).

Magic happens when people from different backgrounds are brought together to discuss challenging issues.  This session will therefore not have any formal presentations, but will instead seek to engage the panelists in discussion amongst themselves and with the audience.  We will generate new ideas that participants will be able to take away and apply in their everyday practices.  Looking forward to seeing you on the Monday afternoon of Telecom World in Bangkok!

Information and Communication Technologies: resolving inequalities

It was great to be invited to give a lecture in the Societat Catalana de Geografia in Barcelona on the subject of “Information and Communication Technologies: resolving inequalities?” on Tuesday 4th October in the Ciclo de Conferencias Programa Jean Monnet convened by my great friend Prof. Jordi Marti Henneberg on the theme of Los Desafîos de lintegración Europea.  This was such an honour, especially since I had the privilege of following the former President of the European Union Josep Borrell’s excellent lecture earlier in the day on El Brexit y sus consequencias en la goberabilidad de la Unión Europea.

lectureThis was an opportunity for me to explore the relevance to the European context of some of my ideas about ICTs and inequality gleaned from research and practice in Africa and Asia.  In essence, my argument was that we need to balance the economic growth agenda with much greater focus on using ICTs to reduce inequalities if we are truly to use ICTs to support greater European integration.  To do this, I concluded by suggesting  that we need to concentrate on seven key actions:

  • working with the poor rather than for the poor
  • pro-poor technological innovation – not the “next billion” but the “first” billion
  • governments have a  key role to play through the use of regulation as facilitation in the interests of the poor and marginalised
  • crafting of appropriate multi-sector partnerships
  • managing security and resilience against the dark side
  • enhancing learning and understanding, both within governments and by individuals
  • working with the most disadvantaged, people with disabilities, street children, and women in patriarchal societies

UNESCO/Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah prize for Digital Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities

Just to note that there is a new deadline of 14th October 2016 for nominations for the 2016 UNESCO/ Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah prize for Digital Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities http://en.unesco.org/prizes/digital-empowerment – do please consider applying or suggest nominations.  It is a great opportunity to raise the profile of institutional and individual successes in using ICTs to empower people with disabilities, and thereby share good practices that can help to enhance accessibility and empower people with disabilities.

ICTs and volunteered geographic information

A literature review of academic research articles on volunteered geographic information (VGI) has revealed a recent, and very interesting, turn in how VGI is being viewed by academics, with implications for practitioners in ICT4D.  In many ways, as I explain below, this turn is actually a return to old questions about authority, indigeneity, and ‘development’.

Two recent articles indicate this turn, which deepens a critique of VGI as something separate from the act of its creation (Sieber and Haklay, 2015).  Goodchild (2007 and 2016) has been at the forefront of defining and legitimising uses of VGI in academia, but in his theorisations it is often couched more in terms of geographic information science, less so in terms of democratisation and participation.

Idris et al (in press) have written, for example, a very illuminating article on ‘engaging’ with indigenous people as ‘sensors’ for ecotourism.  The terminology here is telling, and it comes from Goodchild (2007).  The idea that a citizen (or indigenous person) can transform themselves into a sensor for contributing potentially useful spatial data on the geoweb (i.e. the ‘mappy’ fraction of the web) has a couple of facets that are worth examining, aside from the very passive connotation of the word.

To what extent do the sensors themselves benefit from their contributions?  What are the repercussions for protection of sensitive indigenous and local knowledge systems (such as the location of endangered or keystone wildlife species)?  These are issues that go back to the early days of GIS when Rundstrom (1995) was beginning to ask questions about epistemological diversity in relation to indigenous peoples and mapping/GIS.

I have written about these issues myself, elsewhere, in relation to northern Canada where social media maps hold the potential to reveal indigenous knowledge and sensitive information to outsiders.  The result has often been a patch-work of local maps and map-networks that serve the needs of inhabitants of specific areas, securitised to some extent against outside viewing and user generated content.  This securitisation has to be balanced against the potential uses of such data for development involving outside influence on the data.

The Canadian context is vast, differentiated, and vastly different from many other (indigenous) nations, where sensitivities and emphases lie in directions specific to historical development, trajectories and narratives, especially in relation to the state.

With VGI, crowdsourcing, and neo-geographies of the web continuing to evolve, the old questions keep recurring, and the idea of how much ‘authority’ and accuracy geographic information needs to have to be considered legitimate is continually being brought up.  Terminologies are evolving now as we speak more now in terms of big data and the internet of things, but those old questions still apply.

References:

Goodchild, Michael.  2016.  New questions and a changing focus in advanced VGI research. Transactions in GIS.  Early view online.

Goodchild, Michael.  2007.  Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography.  GeoJournal.  69: 211-221.

Idris, Nurul Hawani; Osman, Mohamad Jahidi; Kanniah, Kasturi Devi; Idris, Nurul Hazrina; and Ishak, Mohamad Hafis Izran. (in press). Engaging Indigenous people as geo-crowdsourcing sensors for ecotourism mapping via mobile data collection: a case study of the Royal Belum State Park. Cartography and Geographic Information Science. Early view online

Rundstrom Robert. 1995 . GIS, Indigenous Peoples and Epistemological Diversity. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems. 22(1): 45-57

Sieber, Renee and Haklay, Muki.  2015. The epistemology(s) of volunteered geographic information: a critique.  GEO: Geography and Environment.  2(2): 122-136.