IISD’s Contributions to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Workshop reports, 2008 to 2011

This report documents a series of workshops organized by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) between 2008 and 2011. The workshops focused on the intersection of Internet policy, governance, and sustainable development, exploring how technical and policy decisions regarding the Internet impact social, economic, and environmental goals.

• IISD posits that the future of sustainable development is intrinsically linked to Internet technical and policy decisions, suggesting a 'policy handshake' where actions to advance sustainability affect the Internet and vice versa.
• There is a significant lack of structured indicators to monitor the environmental impact of Internet and supporting technology, particularly regarding ICT's contribution to climate change and the effectiveness of mitigation applications.
• The Internet's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is growing faster than any other economic sector due to increased access and device usage, though ICT-enabled 'smart solutions' could potentially save 7.8 Gt CO2e by 2020, representing 15% of global emissions.
• The IGF suffers from a representation gap where participants are primarily from the technical community and the private sector that supplies the Internet, while those who use the Internet for social, environmental, or development purposes—such as health and education ministries or trade unions—are under-represented.
• Scenario planning is identified as a valuable tool for Internet governance to help stakeholders navigate uncertainty and move beyond 'the official future' to explore plausible courses of events, though it requires evidence-based data and clear parameters to be credible.
• Regional and national Internet governance forums are increasingly viewed as more important than the global IGF because they can better link policy to local contexts and facilitate actual decision-making, whereas the global IGF is seen as having limitations in its ability to make decisions.
• IISD developed a toolkit for multistakeholder Internet public policy dialogue consisting of evidence-based tools (such as ICT landscape mapping and online surveys) and consent-based tools (such as public multistakeholder events and backcasting).

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (2012). IISD’s Contributions to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Workshop reports, 2008 to 2011. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/igf_workshop_reports.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. IISD’s Contributions to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Workshop reports, 2008 to 2011. 2012. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/igf_workshop_reports.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=IISD’s Contributions to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Workshop reports, 2008 to 2011 |date=October 2012 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/igf_workshop_reports.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopment2012iisds, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{IISD’s Contributions to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Workshop reports, 2008 to 2011}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2012}, month = oct, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/igf_workshop_reports.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }