On November 24, Huawei held a Sustainability Forum with the theme "Growing with Technology: Achieving Sustainable Development". At the event, Huawei joined ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Jeffrey Sachs, head of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and representatives from key regulatory bodies to discuss ways to promote sustainable development through digital infrastructure and build a smart world that is both green and inclusive.
"Next-generation digital infrastructure, such as connectivity and computing, is as essential to driving socio-economic development as physical infrastructure, such as roads, and is critical to the sustainable development of human society," said Liang Hua, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Huawei. "The rapid deployment of computing infrastructure will help accelerate the digital transformation of various industries and promote the closer integration of the digital and physical economies, as well as global economic stability and sustainable development."
Previously, Huawei announced that it will join the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Partners to Connect (P2C) Digital Alliance as one of its sustainable development initiatives, providing connectivity to 120 million digitally underserved people in more than 80 countries around the world by 2025. In the past year, Huawei has already enabled 90 million digitally underserved people in nearly 80 countries to connect to the digital society, promoting sustainable development by bridging the digital divide.
With the belief that "digital technology and the digitization of industry and commerce are perhaps the most powerful forces created by mankind," Huawei is also actively engaged in working with the European region to leverage digital technology for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. Biodiversity is directly linked to the world's food supply, which requires a wide variety of plant and animal species to maintain fertile soil, clean water and air, and protect crops from pests and diseases.
"The loss of biodiversity is a clear moral and existential issue," said Dr. Ana Maria Hernandez Salgar, former chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity (IPBES), who warned that biodiversity loss has implications for human survival. "With the negative trends we are seeing, it is unlikely that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including those related to poverty, hunger, health, cities, water and land, will be achieved," she added.
To address this biodiversity crisis, Huawei is working with WWF Italy on a multi-phase biodiversity conservation project.
In June 2021, Huawei and WWF Italy launched the first phase of the project, which aims to protect Italy's vast wetlands by installing audio recording devices called Nature Guardians in wetland habitats facing external threats. The Guardians captured sounds, sent recordings to the cloud for analysis, and used artificial intelligence to send near real-time alerts to park rangers and other local authorities when poachers' gunshots or chainsaws used in illegal logging were heard. They also recorded animal sounds to help scientists determine whether wetland habitats were changing in ways that could threaten biodiversity in the long term.
Then, in November last year, we launched the second phase of the project, which looks at different approaches to agriculture. As a variety of protected bird species, including red-billed curlews, kestrels and birds of prey, living in Europe's rural ecosystems are being harmed by modern agriculture, including the destruction of food and nesting sites, Huawei and WWF Italy are working on projects to return agricultural land to nature and reduce the use of pesticides.
