The trusted and responsible ability to manage and transfer data across borders can catalyze efforts to advance sustainability, a new Global Data Alliance paper shows. Read the full report here.
Data transfers can help mitigate climate change by enabling more accurate and effective carbon tracking, predictive climate modeling, sustainable cloud computing, the new report finds, and by allowing better global coordination in addressing climate change.
Carbon Tracking
Carbon tracking – an important tool to assess and reduce the carbon intensity of various activities – depends on the cross-border analysis of diverse data sets and cross-border access to cloud computing resources and digital tools.
Predictive Climate Modeling
The real-time application of advanced analytics to climate-related data across borders helps improve predictive climate modeling and the ability to mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events.
Sustainable Cloud Computing
While the shift to cloud computing has significantly reduced the carbon intensity of computing processes (cloud computing is 93% more energy efficient than on-premises computing), unnecessary mandates to construct data centers in numerous jurisdictions in the name of data localization can undermine those efficiency gains.
Conclusion
Climate change is a global problem, and efforts to address it hinge on cross-border transfer of data and access to digital tools across digital networks, allowing for the sharing of knowledge and the implementation of durable and effective sustainability solutions. When countries restrict data transfers, they undermine the potential of data and knowledge to combat climate change and mitigate its effects.
Read more about cross-border data transfers and environmental sustainability here.
