By Cyber Era NG Special Correspondent

At the Tech4Nature Summit 2024, Tao Jingwen, Board Member and Chairman of the CSD Committee for Huawei, gave a speech on Huawei’s commitment to nature conservation and environmental protection. Below is an edited version of his speech

Huawei’s vision is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To embrace this vision and build a more equitable and sustainable digital world, we have developed the S.H.A.R.E. (SHARE) concept of sustainability.

As part of our commitment, we launched TECH4ALL, a long-term initiative in 2019. We work with partners to bridge the digital divide through digital technology, create positive change in the world, and help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with environmental protection and biodiversity conservation as a key area of focus.

In 2020, Huawei and IUCN jointly launched the Tech4Nature partnership to better protect our planet with innovative digital technologies. Tech4Nature phase 1 projects have been implemented in five countries: China, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, and Mauritius.

In the tropical rainforest of China’s Hainan, for example, just 37 wild Hainan gibbons remain, and the species is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. Through online and offline acoustic monitoring, we have collected more than 100,000 Hainan gibbon vocalizations with our partners, covering all six groups in the remaining population. This audio data is automatically identified and transmitted in real time across a communications network, greatly improving the efficiency of scientific research and conservation.

In Yucatan State in Mexico, we work with protected area management organizations and local communities to monitor jaguars and other species using infrared cameras, acoustic monitoring equipment, cloud, and AI. Nearly 50 per cent of Mexico’s jaguar habitats are located in Yucatan. And through the project, we have identified 146 species, including seven wild jaguars, providing robust scientific support for creating a biological corridor for conservation in the state.

From mountains to oceans and from deserts to forests, Huawei TECH4ALL environmental protection projects have been deployed in 53 protected areas around the world. From sea turtles to jaguars and oriental storks to green macaws, these projects cover a diverse range of ecosystems and protect an ever-growing number of endangered species.

Tech4Nature has given us a deep understanding that there is no best technology in the field of environmental protection, only the most suitable technology. For biodiversity conservation, we need to use the most appropriate solutions based on the characteristics of different ecosystems and species, and we must match local needs to adapt to and protect nature.

I would also like to share some of Huawei’s other practices in the field of environmental protection. With the rapid development of science and technology, we can see that cutting-edge technologies, such as clean energy, IoT sensing, 5G, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, are gradually becoming central to energy transformation and green development.

In terms of green energy, Huawei’s digital power business uses ‘bits to manage watts’ to promote the development of clean energy and energy digitalization. By the end of March 2024, Huawei had helped customers to produce over 1.11 trillion kilowatt-hours of green electricity and saved 53.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 550 million tons or planting 750 million trees.

In Gonghe County, Qinghai, Huawei and Huanghe Hydropower Company built the world’s largest single PV power station, with intelligent digital solutions helping to create a global benchmark for clean energy. Accurately managing each string of PV modules, for example, has improved the energy yield of PV plants by more than 2 per cent, increased O&M efficiency by more than 50 per cent, and reduced the cost of energy consumption. At the same time, the innovative application of combining photovoltaic board power generation and sheep herding has greatly improved the local ecological environment and turned a desert into an oasis.

 To cope with extreme weather, the HUAWEI CLOUD R&D team built the Pangu meteorological model based on AI. As the first AI model with higher precision than traditional numerical weather forecast methods, the Pangu meteorological model can complete the 7-day forecast covering key meteorological dimensions in just 10 seconds, a calculation speed that is more than 10,000 times higher than traditional numerical forecasts. In the future, HUAWEI CLOUD will work with global meteorological institutions to explore and fully utilize the potential of AI applications in the meteorological field, and provide support for industries such as agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery, aviation, and navigation.

A trickle into a river can result in the flow of a hundred rivers into the sea, a result that we are finding thanks to the collaboration and innovation between Huawei and its partners. Based on the practices of our global partners such as IUCN, we have jointly developed the flagship publication Tech4Nature – A Partnership for our Planet. We hope to share our experience and lessons with the nature conservation and technology industries to facilitate digital transformation in the field of nature conservation.

As a technical partner of governments, customers, and environmental protection organizations, Huawei is willing to continuously explore environmental and nature conservation scenarios, make good use of appropriate digital technologies, address environmental protection challenges, and jointly build a more equal and sustainable digital world.