It’s estimated that at the very least 2.5 quintillion bytes (or 2.5 billion gigabytes) of knowledge is produced every day. This determine is simply set to extend as technological improvements enable governments, organisations and people new methods to collect knowledge.
But, solely 12 per cent of metropolis knowledge is getting used for policymaking, reflecting the lengthy solution to go for governments to leverage the potential of this exponentially rising knowledge for local weather motion.
“We now have the expertise, we have now the info and we have now the knowledge to unravel local weather change. It’s simply placing it to make use of and determining the ‘how,’” mentioned Ben King, managing director, Google Singapore, APAC, on a panel dialogue about a number of the findings from a commissioned Deloitte report, which can be launched in full on the COP28 local weather summit in November.
Yvonne Zhang, sustainability and local weather director, Deloitte Southeast Asia, emphasised the significance of equitable entry to knowledge and progressive applied sciences, noting that they’re key for enabling local weather motion.
Each King and Zhang had been talking at this yr’s Unlocking capital for sustainability occasion, an annual sustainable finance discussion board organised by Eco-Enterprise.
“Knowledge is plentiful. The query is how will we let that trickle all the way down to a degree the place sources, data and alter can occur from the bottom up,” mentioned Zhang, emphasising the necessity for knowledge governance insurance policies to be interoperable, strategic partnerships, and for insights, in addition to current and upcoming applied sciences, to be meaningfully used.
Cross-border knowledge sharing challenges
Since 2017, Google has been engaged on Knowledge Commons, an open-source platform that goals to enhance the accessibility and utility of the world’s publicly obtainable knowledge. There may be, nonetheless, at the moment extra knowledge on the platform for the USA, India and OECD nations than for Africa, South America and elements of Asia.
“Knowledge localisation and privateness issues from the consumer standpoint are two of the most important obstacles associated to cross-border knowledge sharing in APAC,” mentioned King, who referred to as on Asian governments to undertake worldwide knowledge sharing requirements and make investments extra in knowledge safety applied sciences.
Whereas there’s a voluntary framework on digital knowledge governance for Asean, member nations have adopted completely different cross-border knowledge regimes.
For instance, the Philippines and Singapore enable all knowledge, together with private knowledge, to move freely throughout borders with minimal regulatory necessities, whereas Indonesia and Vietnam undertake a stricter regulatory strategy that utterly or partially prohibits knowledge from being shared exterior their borders, citing public and nationwide safety issues. Malaysia and Thailand enable for cross-border knowledge flows underneath sure circumstances.
Whereas harmonising knowledge insurance policies and making them interoperable throughout completely different jurisdictions will enable for knowledge to move extra freely, this may require elevated collaboration between policymakers and business, famous Zhang, who additionally works with requirements our bodies just like the Worldwide Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), Worldwide Sustainability Requirements Board (ISSB) and World Reporting Initiative (GRI).
Zhang additionally identified that some sustainability-related knowledge, for example on nature and human behaviour, are “analogue”, which means that these knowledge are gathered by bodily observations, which want a distinct methodology to provide and interpret.
“Among the fashions of cooperation and dialogue require an extended time as a result of analogue processes undergo a extra natural tempo of change, not the type of explosive strikes we see within the digital area,” mentioned Zhang, noting that in distinction to analogue knowledge, digital knowledge is an enabler of speedy scalability.
Regardless of the regulatory fragmentation in Asia’s markets, companies throughout a variety of sectors have continued to innovate by adopting low-cost technological options.
As an example, Aruna, an Indonesian start-up, makes use of location knowledge from Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud to assist fishermen confirm that they’re fishing inside permitted areas. The situation knowledge additionally permits the corporate to report on the sustainability of their catches extra precisely to regulators and world certification our bodies.
Decarbonising digital expertise options
Whereas digital applied sciences have monumental potential to be drivers of decarbonisation, it is very important be sure that on a web foundation, they don’t produce extra emissions.
In keeping with the Worldwide Power Company (IEA), knowledge centres and knowledge transmission networks – that are largely accountable for storing, managing and distributing huge quantities of knowledge on-line – accounted for round 330 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 equal in 2020 or 0.6 per cent of greenhouse fuel emissions globally.
Nevertheless, since knowledge centre suppliers proceed to prioritise power effectivity and are transitioning to scrub power, emissions have grown modestly within the final decade regardless of elevated demand for processing energy. Google, for instance, says its knowledge centres are greater than 1.5 instances as power environment friendly as a typical enterprise knowledge centre. Main tech corporations together with Amazon, Google and Microsoft have additionally dedicated to web zero objectives and are investing closely in renewable power tasks.
In the direction of the top of the panel, King responded to issues surrounding how demand for synthetic intelligence-powered (AI)-powered merchandise might result in elevated power consumption.
“The fact is that as AI and machine studying actually begins to take maintain, the computing energy required is important and there are issues raised because of that,” mentioned King.
“Forecasting that is very difficult. However what we’re seeing is that as these computing hundreds improve, the facility to drive it has been lower than our unique forecast. We’re additionally excited to see how options which may come on the again of AI can drive down the facility consumption required.”
