122. Innovation and technology will be critical to the furtherance of sustainable development. Modern information and communications technology provides a particularly salient example. In remote regions, cellular networks enable the use of “mobile money”, allowing small-business owners to access larger markets and provide farmers with up-to-the-minute weather information that enables water conservation and higher crop productivity. Mobile telephones can also distribute early warnings that save lives during extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods.

123. Similarly, the use of information and communications technology can improve the delivery of health services, for instance by allowing for the provision of telemedicine, whereby doctors can attend patients remotely, helping poor people to save money that they would otherwise have to spend on travelling to clinics. Open data platforms, meanwhile, are giving rise to unforeseen improvements in public and private sector transparency, leading to more knowledge-sharing and better decisions, including on natural resource management.

124. Today, more than 5 billion people (80 per cent of the world’s population) have access to telecommunication networks. But while recent decades have seen accelerated progress, with four out of five mobile telephone connections now in the developing world, two thirds of the world’s population (almost all in developing countries) still lack access to the Internet, and a woman in a low- to middle-income country is 21 per cent less likely than a man to own a mobile telephone. Many rural areas in developing countries lack a telephone signal altogether.

125. While the “connectivity revolution” has so far been driven by the private sector, Governments will almost certainly need to be more involved in order to tackle unattended areas and affordability issues, as well as the development of local content and applications, in order to prevent new communications technologies from becoming new drivers of inequality. With the right policies in place, new communications technologies can provide benefits on a multitude of fronts, including educational and economic opportunities for underserved populations and the dissemination of sustainable practices, and act as catalysts for entrepreneurialism and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises — the engine for creating jobs in today’s economy.

126. A greater number of technologies will be developed and will penetrate more deeply through international cooperation. Some efforts to this end exist, although there is considerable room for improvement. In Cancun, Mexico, and Durban, South Africa, in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Governments designed the Climate Technology Centre and Network to develop and promote the diffusion of environmentally sound technologies. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research is a global partnership engaging organizations in research for sustainable agriculture, carried out by 15 centres, in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations. Pooled resources — human and financial — go further to deal with today’s global challenges.

Recommendation 21
127. Governments should work with appropriate stakeholders to provide citizens, especially those in remote areas, with access to technologies, including universal telecommunications and broadband networks, by 2025.

Recommendation 22
128. Governments, international financial institutions and major companies should be encouraged to engage in international cooperation on innovation- and technology-oriented sustainable development on an enlarged scale, enhancing the technological capability of developing countries and taking full advantage of the potential roles played by climate-friendly technologies in dealing with global climate change and in developing a green economy. The agreements reached under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun and Durban are a good step in this direction.