How will blockchain technology help fight climate change? Expert response

For some time, the global climate crisis has been a hot topic of debate. But the rhetoric changed and consensus was reached, shifting the conversation to how to stop – or at least reduce – the current problem of climate change. Two key moments in reaching this point were the adoption of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose mission is to be a “blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all”; and the Paris Agreement, an international agreement adopted by almost all countries six years ago in 2015.
The discussion on how to tackle the global climate crisis turned to emerging technologies and their role in the process. In 2017, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) underscored the importance of blockchain technology to help tackle climate change on a global scale. The UNFCCC secretariat has detailed some specific use cases:
“In particular, transparency, cost-effectiveness and efficiency benefits, which in turn can lead to greater stakeholder integration and better creation of global public goods, are currently seen as the main potential benefits. “.
Decentralized technologies indeed have the potential to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs by overhauling conventional approaches to sustainable development through the benefits of blockchain technology, such as transparency and immutability. As 2020 has shown us, many countries around the world are already turning to emerging technologies in their fight against the climate crisis and in their efforts to reduce carbon-intensive practices. Some examples include Russia, India, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, countries in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and certainly the G7 countries – which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States.
Meanwhile, earlier in 2021, concerns about Bitcoin’s carbon footprint (BTC) became a hot topic both within and outside the crypto community, forcing some major global media to talk about consumption. energy and carbon emissions of Bitcoin. However, the topic was not new, as experts had been discussing the pros and cons of Bitcoin mining for quite some time. Bitcoin supporters have argued that its energy consumption is irrelevant “to global energy production and waste.” and that compared to BTC mining, “processing gold and steel wastes money, energy and resources”.
It is better to put aside the issue of who is right and who is wrong in this debate and instead focus on the impact of it. There is a saying that every cloud has a silver lining, and the most important that has come out of this debate is that the crypto industry has accepted that it needs to focus on green technologies, offsetting emissions from Bitcoin carbon and the exploitation of renewable energies.
To find out the impact that these technologies can have in the fight against the climate crisis, TBEN called on several experts in emerging technologies whose objectives are directly linked to sustainable development and technological innovation. The experts gave their opinion on the following question: How can emerging technologies help meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals and mitigate the impacts of climate change?
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