climate change

As the impacts of climate change intensify, developing countries must implement innovative strategies to adapt to changing climatic conditions and uncertainty. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a key role in strengthening adaptive capacity. This Brief identifies ICTs' contribution to national adaptation strategies and to specific sectoral adaptations in developing countries. It argues that ICTs provide generic support to the process of information gathering, decision-making, implementation and evaluation for national level adaptation.

This paper explores how the Internet and the ICT and related research communities can help tackle environmental challenges in developing countries through more environmentally sustainable models of economic development, and examines the status of current and emerging environmentally friendly technologies, equipment and applications in supporting programs aimed at addressing climate change and improving energy efficiency. Discussion focuses on the role of ICTs in: (i) climate change mitigation (e.g.

Despite the fact that much remains to be explored in terms of the role and potential of ICTs within the climate change field, the analysis conducted here sheds light on key conceptual foundations that help better understand the complex linkages that exist within vulnerable livelihood systems, and that ultimately determine the role of digital technologies in achieving development outcomes amidst an uncertain climatic future.

The Adi tribal community inhabit the Siang river valley and foothills of the Eastern Himalayas of NorthEast India. Most farmers are smallholders, and practice jhum (slashandburn) cultivation. Together with difficult mountainous terrain, regular natural calamities, irregular monsoon rainfall, etc., this means agriculture is only for subsistence. 40 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and agricultural productivity has been among the lowest in India.

This White Paper aims at providing information on: - Impacts of ICT in mitigation of the Climate Change problems; - National policies to deploy and promote Green ICT activities; - Green ICT activities of various SDOs, consortia and fora; - Performance indicators to facilitate Green ICT; and - Green ICT use cases to reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency. This document also intends to help Green ICT stakeholders such as government, SDOs, companies, and R/D engineers understand current status on Green ICT deployment and standardization activities.

Higher frequency and diffusion of climate fluctuations are likely to produce more severe and frequent droughts and floods, which are the main causes of short-term fluctuations in food production in semiarid and sub-humid areas. Taking this into account, it is crucial to identify information and communication systems that the farmers need in order to cope with the new conditions. This paper aims to provide more information and knowledge on the role of information and communication technologies for community-based adaptation to climate change.

In developed nations, information systems are now an indispensable part of most people’s lives. In developing nations, information systems are a means of enabling communication and exchange where no such infrastructure existed before, and that in turn creates many new opportunities from education to economic development. But the development of the global communications network, and the equipment attached to it, has come at a cost.

This paper considers the extent to which climate change has become a strategic priority for information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) organisations. Through a survey of 30 ICT4D organisations primarily from developing countries, as well as an overview of the thematic interests of authors participating in a recent publication on ICTs and environmental sustainability, it shows that there is a predominant interest in adaptation strategies in developing contexts.

Climate change presents two types of disaster threat in developing countries. One is the potentially devastating impact on vulnerable communities of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events. This contributes to the second threat, the compounding of what are already complex development problems leading to a potential downward development spiral for the world’s poor. Effective disaster response demands rapid access to reliable and accurate data and the capacity to assess, analyse and integrate information from varied sources. ICTs can contribute to improve this.

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have proven useful in tailoring responses to situations arising out of the climate-water nexus. ICTs have emerged as a strong way to understand water security challenges. They are increasingly being adopted as key decision support mechanisms for adapting to climate change effects in the developing world. However, ICTs must not be considered simply a panacea for water security. Rather, they are tools that can be smartly used in developing appropriate responses to problems in the water climate change arena.