The recent World Bank’s report on IC4D 2012 highlights the importance of mobile phone in the green revolution. According to the report mobile applications designed to improve incomes, productivity, and yields within the agricultural sector, which accounts for about 40 percent of the workforce and an even greater proportion of exports in many developing countries.
This year ITU’s second annual ‘Green Standards Week’ (GSW), to be held in Paris from 17-21 September, will stimulate the creation of international ‘green ICT’ standards with a view to further expanding the capabilities of information and communication technologies to boost environmental efficiency across all industry sectors.
A big part of the World Bank T report is: voice calls and SMS text messages have proven invaluable in increasing efficiency in smallholder agriculture. People can provide real-time price information and improve the flow of information along the entire value chain, from producers to processors to wholesalers to retailers to consumers.
As we know wide feature of mobile phone is able to run agricultural functions, its multimedia image based solution is being used to overcome illiteracy and provide complex information regarding weather and climate, pest control, cultivation practices, and agricultural extension services to potentially less tech-savvy farmers.
Environmental sustainability has become one of the highest priorities for policy makers worldwide. We now recognise that, over the long term, economic growth at the expense of the environment breeds greater costs than it does benefits. We need decisive actions that can deliver on the world’s commitment to a greener future.
Microsoft will host the second ITU Green Standards Week because ICT is so deeply engrained across industry sectors that any study of ICT is necessarily inter-disciplinary in nature. Green Standards Week is therefore an ideal opportunity to ensure a holistic approach to the creation of green ICT policies and standards.
The main focus of this year’s forum will be the impact of ICTs on the environment. Forum sessions on e-waste challenges and ‘greening’ the ICT supply chain will look at means of minimising the life-cycle environmental impact of ICT products. An information and training session will detail ITU’s standardised Methodologies for the Environmental Impact Assessment of ICTs. And finally, a forum on environmental sustainability for the ICT sector will expand discussions to address the long-term health of the ICT sector, providing insight into the ICT industry’s reaction to the outcomes of Rio+20 in June.
The first day of GSW will feature a gala award ceremony for the second ITU Green ICT Application Challenge, rewarding outstanding concept papers around the topic of “Sustainable Energy for Allâ€.
The enabling power of ICTs will be a special focus, with discussions on how standards might increase other industry sectors’ adoption of green ICTs. Smart grids is one case in point: a session on ‘boosting smart grids through energy-efficient ICT’ will look at how new standards in this field will increase the rollout of smart electricity grids globally, while a forum on smart cities will discuss how ICT can offer smarter, greener ways of life to the world’s rapidly urbanising population.
ITU will release new reports on ICT-enabled environmental sustainability, many of which have been authored by leading experts from ITU’s new academic membership. Among these, three reports discussing the climate-monitoring and disaster-warning potential of submarine communications cables will fuel a focused discussion on this topic on 20-21 September.
source:
http://www.theindependentdigital.com/index.php?opt=view&page=14&date=2012-08-08 
