SUBSEA UNDER PRESSURE: THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF SUBSEA CABLES AND DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN UN POLICYMAKING BY CAROLINE CROWLEY, MELINA TISOPULOS, ANISHA SINGH, STEPHANIE GAY, AND ISABEL JIJON
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his past September, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the main policymaking body of the UN, convened for its 79th annual session. On this occasion, digital infrastructure was in the spotlight. The Assembly’s resultant Pact for the Future document incorporated matters of sustainable development and global governance, as well as a wide array of challenges and objectives. Among these, there was a strong emphasis on digital technologies and infrastructures in a subsection of the Pact known as the Global Digital Compact (GDC). Shortly after the UNGA, country-level initiatives focusing on subsea networks also gained global coverage, with over a dozen member states signing agreements to address specific goals for developing infrastructure resilience. As highlighted in the recent major industry conferences such as the annual meeting of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) in Hawai’i and Submarine Networks World (SNW ) in Singapore, this increased international focus on subsea cables and digital infrastructure has been driven not only by several recent and widely-publicized cable outages, but by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), growing cybersecurity and data security concerns, the need for equitable access to the global digital economy, and heightened attention to climate impacts. While the UNGA and member nations addressed the threats around AI, safety,
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and equity extensively, the language around the environmental sustainability of digital infrastructure was relatively limited. To date, several UN member states have implemented sustainability legislation for information and communications technologies (ICTs), using specific metrics, benchmarking, strategies and locally established programs to monitor and mitigate impacts, which is especially important given the ramping electricity usage of the data center industry. Still, the top-down prioritization from international agreements remains comparatively vague. Without robust sustainability goals and global coordination for digital infrastructure, progress could be fragmented and risks placing an undue burden of environmental impacts or mitigation efforts on developing areas, leading to potential sustainability blind spots. We believe that sustainability, alongside security and equity, deserves critical attention in global digital infrastructure governance. In this month’s column, our undergraduate University of California, Berkeley research team, part of the SubOptic Foundation’s Sustainable Subsea Networks project, analyzes some of the UNGA documentation and the major priorities presented on matters relevant to digital infrastructure. The current international goals often foreshadow the direction of future legislation, especially when it comes to environmental and social
responsibility. As we show, while much of this goal-setting emphasizes government-industry collaboration for future policy design, there is yet a great deal to be done to facilitate the integration of environmental sustainability into the core practices of various digital infrastructure sectors.
DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE INTERNATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
The UNGA is responsible for establishing goals and resolutions affecting all 193 member nations, as well as approving the UN’s budget. As such, its resolutions carry significant weight on the international policymaking stage. Frameworks as significant as the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have come from this body, framing international policymaking, investments, and civil society initiatives since their official publication in 2015. Having this scale of international focus on the digital infrastructure industries, in particular on subsea telecommunication cable networks, highlights the growing perceived importance of and risks to the sector. Taking up over a quarter of the published Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact (GDC) tackles the issue of digital technologies, particularly AI, and associated infrastructure such as data centers and subsea cables. The document acknowledges the tremendous opportunities and benefits that these technologies can bring, especially in regards to pursuing the SDGs.