On Saturday, Editor-in-Chief of Sada El Balad English (SEE) Mohamed Wadie conducted an interview with IBM's vice president of ESG and Corporate Social Responsibility, Justina Nixon-Saintil, on the sidelines of their participation of the current Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh.
1. How does IBM support non-governmental organizations? And as a VP for CSR and ESG, what are your main focal areas?
I am responsible for all of IBM's Global Corporate Social Responsibility efforts and that includes the work that we do in skilling vulnerable communities and creating sustainability programs that focus on leveraging our technologies to positively impact communities that are most impacted by climate change.
2. What is IBM’s role in this year’s COP?
COP27 is about ‘action’ and at IBM we are always focused on how we take sustainability ambition and really turn it into action. So we are really excited to be here because it's about partnership and the work we do with our clients on sustainability. This is also about our focused efforts on enabling vulnerable communities as part of our corporate social responsibility programs and initiatives.
3. Can you tell us more about the Sustainability Accelerator?
Earlier this year, we launched an initiative called the Sustainability Accelerator. And through this initiative, we bring in IBM technologies such as hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence to provide non-profit organizations and government entities with access to our data and expertise. These partnerships enable organizations to create solutions that they could easily implement in vulnerable communities. During COP we announced the program’s clean energy project winners:
1. Environment Without Borders Foundation: Environment Without Borders Foundation's collaboration with IBM will be aimed to develop a platform to forecast, track, and communicate clean energy usage options in Egypt. The goal is to enable resilient and sustainable infrastructure and operations for clean energy in Egypt, helping residents of remote villages for whom energy is currently both expensive and unreliable. The clean energy management platform will leverage IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite and IBM Cloud.
2. United Nations Development Programme: UNDP is working with IBM to increase access to sustainable, affordable and reliable energy in African countries, focusing on those furthest left behind. The goal is to forecast electricity access to better guide policy and investment decisions, using UNDP's technical knowledge and IBM's artificial intelligence and geospatial analytics.
3. Sustainable Energy for All: IBM is working with Sustainable Energy for All to build an intelligent model to project energy needs based on current and future human activity. This model will be designed to help to address key development challenges (e.g., lack of energy access and poor healthcare) and support the development of robust infrastructure planning, such as electrification plans. IBM machine learning and IBM Cloud technology and expertise will be used to build and scale open-access datasets and an energy needs model using temporal and spatial data. Kenya and India are being explored as the first regions to pilot the model.
4. Net Zero Atlantic: Net Zero Atlantic is collaborating with IBM to create an interactive digital tool that will geospatially display environmental and socioeconomic impacts of possible energy system futures for Nova Scotia. Ultimately, the goal is for Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia to leverage advanced modeling capabilities to inform their input into energy and development planning. The tool aims to be easy-to-use, locally relevant and time efficient. It will be designed to produce easy-to-understand visual results using IBM technology such as the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite and IBM Cloud.
5. Miyakojima City Government: The Miyakojima City Government is working with IBM to support the development of a renewable energy strategy including a microgrid on Miyakojima Island, a distant community facing severe climate issues due to typhoons in Japan, with the goal of helping their residents, who rely on a clean local environment for the tourist industry and agriculture. Miyakojima City Government and IBM will collaborate to leverage technologies such as IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite weather data and IBM Cloud to model electricity demand and advise energy infrastructure development.
So, it's really about how we can use and analyze data and how we can make predictions around where clean energy gaps are and where we can deliver new clean energy sources.
4. You mentioned allocating some funds for these organizations, how much are you aiming to invest and what will these funds be directed at?
The sustainability accelerator is an investment of around $30 million over the next three years with the organizations that we are working with. This includes bringing our expertise, providing access to technology completely for free. Also, in some cases, we provide some additional investments to the non-profit organizations to help them create or iterate on those solutions that they already have and be able to implement them well in their communities.
5. Will IBM be building on this initiative?
Yes, we will. We are going to continue to do this great investment in our community. We want to make sure that we are not leaving vulnerable communities behind, especially during this transition. This round was focused on clean energy and we will be announcing our next focus in a few months.
6. Having strong presence in Egypt, how does IBM view the market?
Egypt is very important to us. We have a number of education and skilling programs, especially in Cairo. We work with the government on bringing training and reskilling and upskilling initiatives to young people and to adults seeking jobs as well. Our presence is a great opportunity to bring out our sustainability work here.
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