The year in review
By: Elaine Weidman-Grunewald 21 December, 2012 Climate change , Connect to Learn , Efficiency , Energy , Innovation ,Millennium Development Goals , People , Refugees climate change,
connectivity,
COP18,
economic impact,
education,
energy,
ICT,
innovation,
Mashable,
mobile broadband,
mobility,
Social Good Summit,
Social Media,
sustainability,
technology for good,
telecom
2012 was a year of many diverse events – the continuing Arab Spring the global recession, Curiosity rover’s landing on Mars, Hurricane Sandy, Obama’s reelection as US president, debates over the regulation of the internet, and the Rio+20 summit.
As we approach the end of an eventful year, it’s important to reflect on where we’ve been, where we’re headed and what role technology is playing in transforming our society. Our focus throughout the year has been on bringing
Technology for Good to life by using our global scale and commitment to sustainability to bring about change. We remain committed to applying technology to help solve key global challenges relating to peace, development, refugees and human rights.
Through
Connect to Learn, we have worked to promote the importance of secondary education for girls in developing countries as a way of helping to end poverty. This initiative is steadily gaining momentum – from Africa to the Amazon. Together with our partners, we have connected 25 schools and improved the lives of thousands of students and teachers.
Together with
Refugees United, we have used mobility to help refugees reconnect with their loved ones. As of this year, 180,000 users of more than 80 nationalities were registered for the program and approximately 100 families had been reconnected. Having surpassed our initial targets, we announced a new goal to get 1 million people on the program by 2015.
With the
UN Foundation,
Mashable and
92nd Street Y, we have worked to drive social change through social media engagement. The ability of technology to support sustainable development was in focus at two major events this year – the
Rio+Social held in Brazil in June and the
Social Good Summit, which took place around the world in September.
No country will be left untouched by our changing climate. In April the Broadband Commission issued a
report on climate change that highlighted important policy recommendations. While some progress was made at the recent
COP18 UN Climate Change Conference, there is still much work to be done in this area. The
GeSI’s SMARTer 2020 report, released during the COP18 event, found that ICT-enabled solutions could potentially reduce global CO2 emissions by 16% by 2020, resulting in savings of USD 1.9 trillion.
Technology will not solve all of the world’s problems, but it can be an important enabler. In this holiday season, I would like to wish you a happy new year for 2013 and hope for your continued engagement in Technology for Good.
Elaine Weidman Grunewald is Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson. She joined Ericsson in 1998, and she is responsible for a number of public private partnerships which explore the use of Technology for Good, i.e. the use Ericsson’s core technology to solve some of the world’s most compelling challenges and help to achieve the Millennium Development Goals , including the Millennium villages, Connect to Learn, and Refugees United. She is a leading advocate of Technology for Good and represents Ericsson in a number of external fora including the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and the United Nations Global Compact.
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