ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: CURRENT STATUS
As ICANN's mission concerns the global Internet and the public interest, a commitment to environmental, social, and governance sustainability is in the public's interest. By end of In June 2024, ICANN will initiate the development of delivered a comprehensive approach for implementing an environmental sustainability strategy for ICANN. (See below for deliverables.)
A mailing list has been created for interested ICANN community, Board, and org members to share best practices and resources and foster discussions around the topic of environmental sustainability. To subscribe to sustainabilitylist@icann.org, please click here.
BACKGROUND
Global environmental concerns have prompted discussions among ICANN's Board, community and org about ICANN's role and responsibility in understanding and addressing its own ecological footprint. In 2023, the ICANN Board began developing a plan to delve deeper into this issue as part of its role in overseeing ICANN's Strategic Planning efforts. Additionally, the Board asked ICANN's CEO to explore the issue, leading to CEO goal 8.
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Innovation in Sustainable Operations | Pursue innovative solutions to reduce environmental impact across ICANN's business operations |
Collaborative Engagement | Establish and foster partnerships and collaborations for environmental sustainability efforts across the ICANN ecosystem |
Empower employees, partners, and vendors through policies and practices to prioritize sustainable sourcing | |
Transparency and Accountability | Maintain transparency in reporting environmental impacts and ensure accountability for contributions to sustainability |
DELIVERABLES
The following activities will be delivered by 30 June 2024.
- Best practices research in environmental sustainability practices - Best Practices - PDF (May 2024)
- Proposed scope for the environmental audit to understand baseline - Scope - PDF (May 2024)
- Overall strategy, vision, principles, and proposed activities activities - Strategy - PDF (May 2024)
SCOPE
Best practices research on environmental sustainability practices will focus focuses on four categories, with further sub-categories:
- Offices, servers, and colocation facilities: office building systems (heating, cooling, automations), lighting, energy providers/sources, waster and water, sustainable commuting and telecommuting, data center management
- Travel: low-carbon travel, flights
- Events: event materials, catering, low-carbon accommodation, community engagement
- Org-wide products/purchases: plastic and single-use items, IT equipment and services, supply chain
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RESOURCES
- 21 February 2024: ICANN 79 ICANN79 Prep Week session: ICANN Board Engagement with Community Work Session (Topic 3: Environmental Sustainability at ICANN)
- 6 March 2024: ICANN79 session:At-Large Plenary Session 1: Internet Governance for the Sustainable Development Goals
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- 7 May 2024: Contracted Parties Summit session: Becoming a Sustainable DNS Industry
- 20 May 2024: RIPE88 session: Exploring the Benefits of Carbon-Aware Routing
- 22 May 2024: RIPE88 session: Studying DNS Energy Consumption
- 24 July 2024, IETF session: Environmental Impacts of Internet Technology
- 24 July 2024, IETF Internet-Draft, by Mallory Knodel: Impacts of the Internet on the Environment, Beyond Carbon
SDG Digital GameChangers Award, a global recognition of projects, applications, and policies that are leveraging digital technologies in pursuit of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- IGF 2024 WS #148 Making the Internet greener and more sustainable
- 4 November 2024, IETF 121 session: IETF 121: Getting Ready for Energy-Efficient Networking (GREEN) working group
- 4 November 2024: VSIG Economics Module with Daniel Migault: Sustainable meetings: a focus on IETF and ICANN meetings
CONTACT
- For questions/comments contact sustainability@icann.org