Climate Risk: Closer Than We Think

[Music] well thank you very much and I think that was a wise choice not to try and pronounce my surname um so climate change is having increasingly visible impacts on society here in the Gulf temperatures have already risen and will continue to do so we've seen an increase in severe and unusual weather events in including um the UAE facing its heaviest rainfall in 75 years earlier this year so I've got two esteemed panelists here with me today um who know a lot about the topic so Hassan turning to you first what are images from space capturing in terms of some of these environmental changes both here in the UAE and around the world definitely I think we can summarize three specific sensors that we're utilizing today so Optical images these are the normal images that you can capture through your phone but we're capturing it from space two is synthetic aparture radar images so these are radar images that can uh send the the radar images box so we can utilize the images day and night uh be it you know cloudy or not cloudy so it's it actually covers the weakness of the optical image and third is the hypers spectral so thermal imaging and and everything so these are the three key sensors that we can uh utilize from space for us specifically when when it comes to disaster management and for Earth observation in general and specifically on the environmental side the synthetic aparture radar data is is providing an immense amount of insights uh just to provide examples so we can utilize the SAR images synthetic aparture radar images to understand the vegetation health so in the agricultural domain we can look at the um uh stress on certain uh agricultures uh and we can identify the impact on that this is one two we can look at uh water sources so uh be it you know the tidal planning for for the seash shores submerging underwater land submerging and uh also looking at under uh underground water streams and how that land deformation is impacted so that's the second thing in in in water and third through both Optical Imaging and and and S Imaging we can look at urban areas identifying you know the utilization of all the different utilities uh so from transportation to power to um uh emissions and everything so all of these different dimensions give us a larger perspective of things and then we correlate all of that data around to uh uh connect them all together or we stitch all this data together and we can uh deduce certain insights that can support uh decision making and provide certain courses of action brilliant and that analysis point we'll get to very shortly because I'm I'm really interested to pick up on that in the meantime Mandela I wanted to ask you um so in terms of these environmental changes that we're seeing what impact are they having on businesses so from a material reputational balance sheet perspective yeah absolutely so um I suppose two big Mega Trends are now happening uh one is that the same rigor of financial accounting is now happening with sustainability uh reporting and accounting uh uh the two big regulations that are upon us already is CSR in um Europe so all European companies now will have to do integrated reporting um and under the IFRS which is um uh issb is also coming now for Asia and the Middle East is going to adopt the issb uh framework in in at large so what does that mean is that this is the first time we are going to see in reporting uh value chains you're going to have your lawyers you're going to have your Auditors so the claims that are being made have to have a lot more rigor the second piece of that is that it's not just good enough to do a 200 Page sustainability report anymore that sits on your website um with some pretty pictures and lots of narrative this is going to have again uh the the need for for integrated reporting is crucial so you're going to see financial and the non-financial the social environmental coming together um but we're also going to start to see what we call materiality assessments which means means that you only can disclose what counts based on your size your sector and your areas of operation what that will also mean is that the uh organizations that want to be part of the value chain or are in the value chain of these corporates they will have to also prove their sustainability credentials and so this is kind of um the the need for rigor the need for accuracy in data and the uh evidence-based claims are now going to be at the for front of everything that we're going to see in 2025 coming uh forward and I want to sort of maybe touch on this you big use case which is uh the voluntary carbon market so carbon trading right now we have uh an issue that you've got the project owner that says my Project's going to sequester this much um CO2 you've got uh four Auditors uh uh that like like the big four but on on the um voluntary carbon markets that have to sign that off it's a fairly manual process at the moment and then you've got all the buyers that are wanting to buy that to offset and um where it's and that's where it stops unfortunately so there is there was a big uh um due diligence done by a number of Publications and analysts last year that uh showed and proved that over hundreds of billions of Caron credits are now worthless why because no one continued with the monitoring reporting and verification to say did that project actually do what it said it was going to do and invariably actually it created more damage to those communities because that's how those those projects work is you'd have to do a trade-off with the indigenous or the community to make that work and the revenues that was meant to go back to those communities didn't happen so platforms like we've been building a monitoring reporting verification platform on disclosure and platforms like Hassan's will now be very important from a geospatial perspective to Counter Intelligence the data to say that project was meant to do XY Z you could have sensors actually saying did it achieve that and what are the penalties if it doesn't because you've now got someone who's bought that asset so I don't know if you wanted to I think uh I'm in total agreement of course and as data right now from remote sensing and and the space data in general is becoming more accurate and higher resolution there is a way to actually uh uh transform this data to become bankable data that can be used for validation when it comes to vcm it can be used to U certain accreditation as well for certain areas so it's becoming more consistent as well so and of course later when we talk about the AI site that can actually provide even further Insight so we can predict we can be a bit more um active instead of reactive certain cases as well and we've seen right now we've done a lot of different uh uh examples but if if I just take one example that we have done uh in 2022 so in 2022 we spons we sponsored a a Golden Globe race boat that went across the entire globe and while he was doing that we've uh uh gathered water samples from across across the oceans and we've we've obtained of course images and everything across three finding that was really uh that were very uh um conspicuous to any one that will see it one as he was going through he me he he he noticed certain Wildlife changes so Alber Rose uh appearing in way Norther than they're supposed to to be uh assuming that you know that's uh because of fish in water are changing their location as well which means water uh uh temperature is changing this is one two uh if the the flying fishes or whatever are actually appearing way sther than normal so that also shows that the biodiversity in that location is also changing due to temperature due to other uh impacts as well this is the second and third and most importantly while he was gathering these water samples we actually identified microplastics yeah and the furthest Southern uh sides of the South Ocean which means you know that that waste is actually impacting the entire Globe so to put all these uh uh information to put this Global Information in the hands of uh uh you know entities like wwg it becomes powerful tool for them to force and to move forward so two great use cases about the importance of data and within that verifiable data from Source yeah um what about the role of AI positive and or negative in terms of then analyzing um that data I want to take this first okay okay so this you know for anyone who's gone into all of the different panels AI has always been brought up um in every single one um as a technologist as a sustainability fintech AI is upon us um I am I believe there are many very many many positive use cases for its use but I but if I can just be a bit controversial um I see two kill switches on AI uh that we need to think about one is that data privacy by its very nature AI has to uh take your data it has to your prompt it has to go into the open source it has to process it there it has to bring it back and then it has to send it back to for processing again for the language models to work that is the nature of uh of AI now um I've just come from Saudi Arabia cup6 and um the first kill switch is that breaks every GDP law uh a lot of banks a lot of fex a lot of regulator entities even those that will be under uh these two csid isbs won't be allowed to send data out of their countries on behalf of their customers Etc and any any platform today that has embedded AI which has not been containerized to be able to turn it off if the customer needs it to be turned off or the nation needs it to be turned off uh is going that is a big big issue um and we already have um we've been in rfps already where that was the number one question by the cyber security team saying okay it's fantastic that you've got this can you turn it off and thank thankfully uh we said yes we it's a toggle you can turn it off that's kill switch number one kill kill switch number two is that there are already platforms data sovereignty platforms that uh have essentially a wallet that wallet will hold all your data in the public domain you will then be able to share your data commercially with anyone that wants that data those platforms already exist they're coming out of Silicon Valley now um the Millennials and gen Zed will be taking that in Spades um and uh that's the second switch because obviously again AI needs data to be able to create profiles and to be able to create large language models so those two uh for me are the two biggest risks that we need to be thinking about and maybe just one final statement on this is that my belief the platform the the technology that can support with this is blockchain uh because you can you can actually uh solve all of those issues data sovereignty data territorialization Providence and then also democra ization of that data in containerized on Prem or or um or even in the in the in on cloud um to to to to support all of that and then you actually have and and when there is a violation or or cyber security breach you can actually Trace that back to source so that's so maybe what about the more have been too controversial and you're like well hang on we wanted to start this from from that perspective because of course this the all these concerns are are valid and it's it's actually uh slowing the pace of utilizing AI even in a faster way in a in a real commercial and case but if if I take the example that we have done within the UAE so how did we actually come up with with the entire AI perspective to to become more valid to become more active and to be become useful one first of all we uh push the envelope on having One Sovereign Cloud yeah and that cloud is categorized from classified Sovereign information to government information to commercial information and all of that is put under the custodianship of the CSC and I see Dr Muhammad quti here our uh chairman of the uh cyber security Council so that custodian is ensuring that the data is actually handled the right way with the right uh data privacy acts first of all locally within the OE and then of course internationally if if that package is actually uh brought uh up front to to other locations so how do I how do I actually maintain the data the right way this is one two when it comes to AI we also understand there is no AI without the neural network that's right so if I'm going to operate in silos and setting up on Prem uh uh systems I'm going to still operate in Silo that's right so we're accommodating that Silo need but we in the meantime we're saying there are certain amount of information that can be utilized so how can I tap into specific information that you have and I can correlate it with the information from another entity and another entity then I can create that neural network so dealing of how do I actually flow the data between classified and non-classified uh parameters and finally ensuring that I am s sitting on top of the best inclass cyber security which is very important and thus the UAE along with with the artificial intelligence uh push cyber sec security became the key main important part to go hand in hand with that perspective so if that is built the right way yeah you can navigate around how much information I can actually utilize and how how much information I can share across and at the end of the day it's all about confidence one and trust between the entire uh ecosystem awesome so that's um a nice note Hassan to go on to my next question because you're talking about how the UAE is doing a great job of future proofing itself so now I wanted to end this panel by asking you both as um climate risk experts looking at the next 5 10 15 years what scares you most number one but on to end on a more positive note where do you see the biggest breakthroughs coming in terms of climate risk mitigation if you don't mind I'll start uh so with with our uh monitoring so far especially for the last two years we've seen more um uh disasters and more things happening on on regular basis and and you just mentioned you know the the rainfall that we've had earlier this year that we haven't seen this in 75 years we've seen the flood that happened in Libya the earthquake that happened in Syria and turkey earlier as well last year we've had actually a a rainfall or a flood during July in fuer and our north northern side in in 2022 so we're seeing these climate changes in action right now and we're becoming more and more uh uh familiar with it but at the end of the day if this does not become uh you know bankable data that you know uh entities like wwg can utilize and can enforce it's waste of time we have to act now we have to connect the Two Worlds together from now so it's it is a challenge but we have the tools we have the means and the utilization of AI to one predict to at least try to prevent and finally to support the action during the event is is quite important and we've seen this during the event of the rainstorm for example how we connected with all of that and made sure that everything is is all connected supporting the First Responders on the ground uh during the event and then studying the impact after that and I'm uh very uh sorry to take that very long so I'll keep this no it's okay see AIG screen here saying shut it down um but um my I want to talk about what I'm fearful of I I'm really optimistic I want to talk about uh some of the big breakthroughs and the big breakthrough I can see is uh so even here in the uh UAE the central bank has said that they're going to un mobilize a trillion AED or ins sustainable Finance by 2030 that is a big goal um but if when I ask the bankers and ask the investors how you going to do it they're like I don't know um and one of the things I think that we can do is radical collaboration now to really help collect this trusted comparable timely evidence-based data that is as you said bankable to be able to then unlock financing at scale and um you know we need to do less talking more execution and I think ecosystems like this can create sandboxes bring the ecosystem together everyone working in one Mission One Vision and using four IR Technologies to really and I would say for good because without the ethical backbone and the ethical framework this Technologies can all be used for a lot of harm as well um which weal which actually the last panel we're talking about as well so I think that's uh my my my opt optimism is that I'm seeing all of the great leaders uh coming together now to do things at scale and in a collaborative way brilliant and oh look at this we're now up and you entered on the good note of Less Talk More Action so let's stick to that and um open the stage for the next panel thank you thank you so much to you both for sharing your insights and to our here [Music]