Sustainability Leadership Through Technology And Innovation

Sustainability Leadership Through Technology And Innovation

In the universe are billions of galaxies,

In our galaxy are billions of planets,

But there is #OnlyOneEarth.

Let’s take care of it.

Led by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and held annually on 5 June since 1973, World Environment Day is the largest global platform for environmental public outreach and is celebrated by millions of people across the world.

ASEI  Celebrated #worldenvironmentday2022 with a recommitment to  #sustainable #technology #innovations . Many of you may recall our earth day events, sustainability and energy talks in Michigan and So cal as well as   STI2022 – the theme for our 34th National Convention that was hosted by Silicon Valley chapter on Jan 15/16, 2022 .

Below is a first person impression of what transpired during the Sustainability panel discussion at the ASEI CXO summit as part of the recent National Convention, written by ASEI student intern Syna Sharma.
The climate is changing constantly and rapidly. Due to the constantly changing climate, all universities and organizations around the world need to be prepared for the unexpected. During ASEI’s 34th National Convention, the theme of the convention was STI – sustainable technology innovations. While a number of topics of importance to CXOs were discussed during the convention, one of the panel discussions focused entirely on Sustainability. Moderated by Kunal Sood, Founder and CXO of WeThePlanet and Global Ambassador of Singularity University, this panel featured voices from across 3 different continents, including tech executive Bhawna Singh, Award winning Civil engineer and UK based academic Dr. Priti Parikh, and Social entrepreneur and former head of innovation at Rolls Royce, Rajashree Rao.
CXO Summit
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Achieving Sustainability Through Technology and Innovation

This panel presented many new ideas ranging from the pandemic’s impact on the climate and technology to how various technologies can be used to improve the overall wellbeing of the world. During the presentation, Bhawna Singh talked about the increased usage of cloud over the years, specifically during the pandemic. Impacting work habits, the pandemic has caused cloud usage to be higher than initially planned, according to 90% of the people sampled during research. Due to a shortage of hardware, many organizations accelerated their migration plans from energy guzzling data centers to the cloud. Going cloud-native is a major technology trend that is picking up pace,and embraces SDGs too as most public cloud vendors are either compliant or working towards SDGs by 2030 and reducing carbon footprint. This is why we need to embrace cloud technology and allow competitiveness in the digitized world.
Dr. Priti Parikh at the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management took an interesting take on technology’s impact on global sanitization and poverty. COVID has proven that if there is a lack of infrastructure and equity, those who are underprivileged suffer the most. 2 billion people on earth do not have access to basic sanitation. Dr. Parikh’s suggestion is to invest in sanitation as it will hit all of the sustainable development goals we are looking to meet. An eye-opening point she made was that lower-class citizens make up the majority of the population, yet they are only responsible for around 10% of the world’s climate change. They still bear the burden of that poor infrastructure and feel pressured to reduce emissions. In the panel discussion on helping the climate using technology, Rajashree Rao, a technology leader & social entrepreneur who has previously worked in innovation ecosystems as well as cloud computing and data analytics, brought up an inspiring point on how you don’t have to be an engineer to understand and know about technology, and if you are passionate, you can do anything. Concluding the panel, Bhawna Singh adeptly summarized the discussions into a single sentence that resonated with me-“Technology is an equitable means to get the solution or power of what we are trying to solve for everybody.”
Hearing from all these influential speakers during this panel changed my views on technology and its relation to climate change and sustainability, and showed me that by using technology, we can change the world for the better.

Syna Sharma is a San Jose, CA based rising high school junior spending her summer time productively by interning and getting involved with ASEI activities.

Arjun Parth