I’m Akshay Rao, a high school student from Bangalore, India. I attended a very interesting session on Harnessing Technology & Innovation for NDC Implementation. For starters, NDCs, are countries’ self-defined national climate pledges under the Paris Agreement, detailing what they will do to help meet the global goal to pursue 1.5°C, adapt to climate impacts and ensure sufficient finance to support these efforts.
While it was asserted that AI helps us to do things faster, quicker, better at lower cost, the conference also discussed on how technology can help make our environment better. Optimizing energy consumption, efficient transportation, increasing agricultural yield, deforestation monitoring/ management, optimizing industrial processes could be a few possible ways to help the world we live in by usage of technology. While these really capture my interest, there we also other ways discussed like deployment of energy efficient data centers and digital twin technology. Also, incentivizing policy frameworks that will matter to environment plays a pivotal role, too, as discussed.
So, in my view, if AI and technology are used efficiently, being mindful of the consequences and effects it bears on the environment, it can be a boon to the current and future generations! It could help us resolve or decelerate the climate related problems that we are staring at right now!