On 7 November at COP27, the Secretary-General unveiled the details of his plan to ensure universal access to early warning systems within the next five years. Joining him and other key UN officials was Brad Smith, the Vice Chair and President of Microsoft, and a .
He talks about the power of data, innovation and technology to accelerate the development and use of early warning systems, making them accessible and inexpensive to all.
Question: How can we harness the power of innovation and technology for collective climate action?
Brad Smith: If there's one part of the global economy that tends to focus on moving fast it is in the private sector; it is in business, and mostly it's through innovation. Where we see such an opportunity is to adapt to climate change, to mitigate climate change, through technology, innovation but typically dependent to some important degree on the cloud, on data, on AI.
One way to think about the speed that's needed is that business can move fast with innovation. NGOs, nonprofits really excel at then incubating new solutions using sometimes the tools that businesses create governments take those solutions to scale. If we each can focus on how to work with each other in a multi stakeholder approach more effectively, then we'll each have our own role, our own speed, and will respect the role that governments play in creating and applying the law. But we can collectively move faster.
Question: How can tech companies like Microsoft help with early warning systems?
Brad Smith: I think we at Microsoft have a very important role to play in supporting the Secretary General's initiative to really address early warning systems. If we can achieve the vision of putting in place in the next five years a stronger global early warning system, no longer will people need to hear about the risk of a flood at the very last minute or later. This is all about forecasting weather that is coming. And humanity has the ability to do this. But it's not universally applied around the world.
One of the things that will accelerate early warning systems is better technology. There's lots of different technologies, but they all rely critically on the use of data, and increasingly, the use of artificial intelligence to build predictive models that harnessed the power of that data. And of course, to use that data, you need a cloud computing infrastructure so it's accessible and inexpensive. And that's where Microsoft is hoping to help.
I think we can make a difference. We are huge believers in the importance of this early warning initiative. So we're very committed to helping you advance it.
Question: You are a SDG Advocate. How can data and technology help to advance not just climate action but the Sustainable Development Goals in general?
Brad Smith: Data ultimately is the tool that can advance every single one of the 17 goals. In some ways, we need better data just to know how we're doing now that we're halfway through these SDGs. We still need to make a lot more progress in putting a data infrastructure in place.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the problem is, if there's one thing I've learned, data is a piece of the solution. And right now, there is a data divide that is just as big for the Global South as many of the other divides that people are more familiar with. For every 14 data scientists that live and work in the Global North, there's only one that currently lives and works in Africa.
If we can accelerate the pace of data science, we can help a continent like Africa advance all 17 SDGs. That's why we at Microsoft are using our presence here at COP27 in part to try to address the data divide with the Global South.
Question: As we move to cleaner, greener economies, we need to make sure that people have jobs. How do we ensure a just transition?
Brad Smith: We need more than money to get where we need to go. Part of what we need to do is to equip people with the new skills that are really indispensable for the jobs of the future, especially when we consider that the jobs may migrate to where the people have the skills to fill them.
One of the new focuses that we're bringing to bear here at COP27 and beyond is to focus on sustainability skills. As the economies of the world transition, people will need new kinds of sustainability skills.
Think about it like this. For the last 30 years we've seen the world really enter the digital era so suddenly, we needed to get computer science into schools. We needed to hire employees across the economy, so that we had people who knew how to code. And all of us needed to develop a degree of digital fluency to know how to use a laptop, to know how to use a smartphone.
The next 30 years will require that we do this again, not just with digital skills, but with sustainability skills. We'll need some experts who can go deep. We will need many people in many jobs that will need to combine the expertise they have with a very important dose of sometimes narrow but deep sustainability knowledge, say somebody who's managing a procurement process. And we will all need to develop a degree of sustainability fluency in our future. That is a big part of how the entire world Global North and Global South will need to come together to make the climate transition that the world requires.
Question: How involved is the tech industry in advancing climate action?
Brad Smith: When you look at the role of the tech sector, when it comes to climate, the tech companies are all vying with each other to do a better job than each other in addressing climate issues. That's a good thing for the world.
My hope is that some day years or decades from now, I'll be able to meet some of my competitors who will all be retired. And we'll be able to look back and say, ‘remember when we were among the first movers? Remember, when we helped inspire each other to each do better?’ I think the world could use a dose of that not just in the tech sector, but everywhere.
We spend so much time on planet Earth today talking about the things that divide us that we forget to talk about the things that unite us and the ways we can bring out the best in each other. As an SDG advocate, that’s a little bit of what I hope to bring to conversations.
Read what other prominent Voices from COP27 are saying about the themes, negations and the way forward.
