ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF A DIGITAL PLANET

Prelims level : Environmental Impact assessment Mains level : Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.
No Set Found with this ID

Why in News:

  • Technology is a solution to the world’s environmental challenges, but also part of the problem. Industry executives are facing rising pressure to clean up their energy and resource-intensive business.

Details:

  • There are the server farms crunching mammoth amounts of data which require huge amounts of electricity both to run and to power air-conditioning which keeps the equipment from getting too hot.
  • Under the current global energy mix, the share of greenhouse gas emissions from information and communication technologies will rise from 2.5% in 2013 to 4% in 2020 the French think-tank Shift Project said in a recent report.
  • The Basel Action Network NGO estimates that the European Union exports some 350,000 tons of electronic and electrical waste (a category that also includes appliances like washing machines) to developing countries each year.
  • The race to extract the rare-earth metals essential for modern phones and other devices, leading to deforestation and water pollution, is also an environmental threat in Africa and Asia.

India, the third-highest contributor

  • India, the third-highest contributor, is projected to see emissions rise by 6.3% from 2017.
  • According to the study, there is 2.7% projected global rise in 2018 has been driven by appreciable growth in coal use for the second year in a row, and sustained growth in oil and gas use.
  • Representatives from more than 190 countries have begun discussions at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland, on ways to equitably cut carbon emissions.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

  • The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC) is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to 14, 1992.
  • The objective of the treaty is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The parties to the convention have met annually from 1995 in Conferences of the Parties (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change.
  • In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded and established legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The 2010 Cancún agreements state that future global warming should be limited to below
    2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level.

Parties to UNFCCC are classified as:

  • Annex I countries: Industrialized countries and economies in transition
  • Annex II countries: Developed countries which pay for costs of developing countries.
  • Non – Annex I countries: Developing Countries.
Share Socially