Mobile and digital technology for climate action

Climate change now underpins many of the risks facing people, markets and institutions around the world. While its reach is global, the burdens of climate change are heaviest in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Tackling these impacts requires decisive, systemic action at speed and at scale, with approaches to climate action that reflect local realities and support long-term development.

Digital solutions are uniquely positioned to drive climate action in LMICs by:

More than half the world’s population – 4.4 billion people – now live in cities, and this number is rising fast. By 2050, seven in 10 people will be urban residents,¹ with more than 90% of growth concentrated in Africa and Asia.² In LMICs, 58% of people live in intermediary cities – cities with less a million inhabitants.³ Many cities already struggle to meet the basic needs of their growing population like energy, water and sanitation, and inequalities are widening with global development challenges and climate change. Higher temperatures are pushing up sea levels, fuelling more extreme floods, droughts and storms and enabling tropical diseases to spread. The impacts fall heavily on city services, infrastructure, housing, livelihoods and healthcare and energy demand. Yet, cities also drive the climate crisis, with urban areas producing about 70% of global CO₂ emissions, primarily from transport and energy use in buildings.⁴

Although cities have a critical role to play in tackling the climate crisis, they receive only a small share of the global financing needed to build low-emission, climate-resilient systems, with intermediary cities often neglected in favour of larger cities. Mobile-enabled digital solutions can transform how cities plan, deliver and manage essential services, helping them become people-centred, greener and more resilient.

The GSMA is working to ensure that mobile and digital technology underpins the next generation of inclusive, low-carbon and climate-resilient cities. We are exploring how mobile networks, data and technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT) can improve urban services – from energy access and water management to urban heat and climate risk planning – and we translate insights from our work into policy guidance and financing conversations with city authorities, regulators and development partners.

Recent urban research by the Digital Utilities team has drawn attention to three broad types of digital adoption in cities. The first is the large-scale deployment of digital infrastructure in large and mega-cities supported by national programmes; the second is a renewed focus on new city development globally; and the third is in fast-growing intermediary cities.

In 2025, we published the Digital Foundations: The Path to People-Centred Smart Cities report, which highlights how digital infrastructure and technologies like AI, when anchored by mobile network operators (MNOs), can guide rapid urban growth toward inclusive, resilient and climate-smart development. The report builds on two earlier publications – IoT for Development and IoT and Essential Utility Services – that provided global connectivity data and new estimates for IoT deployments to 2030 and reviewed the extent of adoption of 17 utilities use cases.

Building on these insights, the GSMA has worked with partners to turn evidence into practical global guidance. We have collaborated with our longstanding partner UN-Habitat to help shape the International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities. Developed through a two-year inclusive consultation process involving key global stakeholders, the guidelines offer a non-binding framework based on four core principles: shared prosperity; digital human rights, equity and inclusion; sustainability, resilience and crisis response; and community participation and collaboration – as well as four enabling conditions, including governance; digital literacy and skills development; digital public infrastructure, data and smart city services; and financing mechanisms. Our engagement has been instrumental in shaping this important non-binding framework, which was presented and adopted at the Resumed Second Session of the UN-Habitat Assembly on 29–30 May 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya, and also featured in UN Habitat’s World Smart Cities Outlook.

More recently, the GSMA served as a convening partner for the 3rd Africa Smart Cities Investment Summit (ASCIS) in Addis Ababa, where discussions built on our earlier engagement with MNOs, including Ethio Telecom, MTN Nigeria, MTN Ghana and Airtel Africa, to help articulate and refine their smart city strategies.

Circular economy models are becoming a critical pathway for cities to cut emissions, reduce pollution and create new green jobs. Digital technologies can underpin this shift by providing the data, traceability and user interfaces that make waste streams visible, valuable and investable.

The GSMA began exploring circularity in 2021 with Digital Dividends in Plastics Recycling, our first deep dive into how mobile-enabled solutions and connectivity can strengthen plastics value chains. In 2022, our Catalysing Partnerships in Plastics report examined how MNOs)and plastics organisations can collaborate – from using mobile money and agent networks to pay and onboard informal waste collectors, to leveraging digital platforms for route optimisation and demand aggregation. In parallel, through the GSMA Fund for Digital Urban Services, we started to move beyond plastics and look at how circular economy principles could apply to a wider set of urban waste streams.

Over the course of our engagement with MNOs in this space, we have seen a shift: from interest in circularity confined mainly to e-waste management and driven by compliance and corporate responsibility concerns, to a more holistic exploration of how mobile networks, data and services can support circular business models. The GSMA has helped facilitate new partnerships between MNOs and locally led waste innovators in LMICs, particularly in East Africa. This includes Safaricom’s collaboration with TakaTaka Ni Mali, a female-led plastic waste management organisation in Kenya, and the engagement of Taka ni Ajira, a Tanzanian waste management company, with major Tanzanian MNOs such as Airtel Tanzania, Vodacom Tanzania, MTN Rwanda and Airtel Kenya. Beyond MNOs, we are also convening peer learning and partnership discussions with eight other plastic recycling organisations – Taka ni Ajira, Coliba (a GSMA Innovation Fund alumni), EnviroServe Rwanda, Ecobrix Uganda, Zoomlion Ghana, Earth Care Plastics Ghana, Upcycle Ghana, Copip Ghana and Recycle-up Ghana – to support knowledge and technology transfer across markets.

In 2024, we consolidated these insights in Making Circularity Work, which takes stock of how and where digital innovation is enabling circular economy models in waste management. Drawing on the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Services and the wider ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, the report highlights growing momentum for city-level, national and global policy change on waste, and how these shifts are creating new markets for circular approaches. Digital solutions from USSD and mobile apps to IoT and data platforms, are helping to translate new policies into practical service models by improving material traceability, enabling inclusive participation of informal workers and giving municipalities and investors the data they need to back scalable circular solutions.

Climate finance directs capital to mitigation and adaptation initiatives. Global needs will exceed $6 trillion a year by 2030, and LMICs currently need about $2.4 trillion but attract far less, leaving a gap of around $1.8 trillion a year. Most flows go to high-income countries (HICs), and little reaches local actors, even though climate-vulnerable communities require urgent investment. Digital technology can widen access, with mobile money, digital marketplaces and data tools helping farmers and other groups traditionally excluded from the financial system build credit profiles and secure loans, credit and insurance. In carbon markets, digital monitoring, reporting and verification (dMRV), remote sensing, AI and blockchain can improve transparency, cut costs and speed payments –essential for the voluntary carbon market (VCM), which is complex, fragmented and often questioned on integrity.

The GSMA works to unlock this finance where it is most needed. We have published guidance on digitally enabled climate finance, supported inclusive innovators through the GSMA Innovation Fund and produced a practical guide and calculator to help startups navigate the VCM. In 2024–25, we also worked with policymakers – including Kenya’s climate envoy – to mainstream dMRV, reduce barriers for smaller projects and channel trustworthy, digital finance to underserved communities. Through the GSMA Innovation Fund, we have also helped startups procure technical assistance to assess their readiness to enter the VCM.

The GSMA VCM Startup Guide is an online toolkit that helps early-stage climate innovators navigate the voluntary carbon market by explaining market structures, integrity standards and key actors. It enables them to assess whether their products or services can generate high-quality credits, and outlines routes to accreditation and revenue, equipping teams with practical tools, case studies and a Carbon Credits Breakeven Calculator to estimate viable volumes and prices so they can judge commercial feasibility before investing. The guide aims to lower entry barriers, improve project quality and connect startups to climate finance through credible participation in the VCM.

Along with tools and support for innovators, we work through strategic partnerships to mobilise digital climate finance for vulnerable communities. A joint brief, Digital Pathways to Land Resilience: Mobilising Climate Finance, was published with the UNCCD Global Mechanism to amplify the potential for digital solutions in climate finance, with a specific focus on reaching vulnerable communities affected by land degradation and drought. The brief was published and promoted for the UNCCD COP16 Finance Day. The GSMA is also providing technical assistance master classes to digital innovators (e.g. the MTN-WWF Pachi Panda challenge that supports young innovators to scale technology and digital solutions for climate resilience and adaptation) and facilitating ecosystem partnerships (e.g. Safaricom-4RD, to develop their dMRV Carbon Exchange platform, CaVEx).

Nature tech is the use of mobile and digital tools to protect, manage and restore ecosystems and the natural capital on which people depend. It includes real-time monitoring and Earth observation, IoT sensors and AI analytics, drones for restoration, early warning systems and digital marketplaces that connect coastal and rural communities to buyers and finance. The need is urgent – globally, wildlife populations have dropped 73% in the past 50 years⁵ and 40% of land is degraded, undermining food security, ecosystem health and climate resilience. LMICs hold much of the remaining biodiversity and depend on natural capital, yet face the greatest risks.

Biodiversity and thriving ecosystems are essential for climate stability and sustainable livelihoods across the world’s land, oceans and lakes. The stakes are clear, with more than 3 billion people relying on aquatic ecosystems for food and livelihoods. Aquaculture contributes around 0.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, underscoring its growing role in food systems and the importance of scaling it sustainably.⁶ Digitally-enabled management can reduce impacts and improve outcomes for people and nature alike, but models to scale it are nascent and adoption is uneven.

Against this backdrop, the GSMA has been building the evidence base, catalysing innovation and advocating for policy and investment that put digital technology to work for nature. Our research has defined the concepts, benchmarks and narratives shaping global conversations on mobile for development. We publish landscape reports on natural resource management and blue economy opportunities, and collaborate with multilateral institutions including UNCCD, IUCN and UNDP, to champion practical pathways for deployment. In parallel, through the GSMA Innovation Fund, we have supported local digital innovators such as Dayaxa, J-Palm, Sommalife, Monsoon Tea Company and HydroNeo.