Telepresence Supports Worldwide Discussion about Climate Change

Challenge In 1992, member countries of the United Nations signed an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in which they committed to collaborate on strategies for limiting increases in global temperatures. The UNFCCC, which to date has been signed by 194 countries, recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource, and that this resource is deteriorating because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The first global meeting to discuss the UNFCCC, called the Conference of the Parties (COP), was held in Berlin in 1995. The 17th and most recent Conference of the Parties, or COP17, was held in Durban, South Africa at the end of 2011. The United Nation’s number-one goal was to strike a global political deal among nations on climate change combat strategies and to either extend or improve the existing Kyoto Protocol.

With communication being a key success factor in reaching consensus among the United Nation’s 194 member states, it was critical that event organizers provided a robust, secure, and highly available communications network.

Supporting Greater Global ParticipationGiven the difficulties of bringing together so many stakeholders in one physical place at one time, the United Nations felt that collaboration technology was critical to provide virtual access to as many discussions and side events as possible . Although important for any conference with a broad and geographically dispersed list of

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United Nations and South African government deploy Cisco networking architecture and collaboration solutions to secure and extend communication at COP17.

Customer Case Study

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Customer Name: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)Event: Conference of the Parties 17 (COP17)Event Profile: Largest global political and sustainability conference in 2011 with participation from all 194 United Nations countries Industry: Public SectorLocation: Durban, South AfricaNumber of Participants: 19,000Event Duration: November 28 – December 9, 2011

Challenge:• Ensure mission critical communications network is highly

available, stable, and secure throughout conference• Scale greater global participation in climate change convention

through methods of virtual collaboration, leveraging high definition video communication capabilities in connecting COP17 participants with peers, experts and media globally

• Allow people to collaborate and participate from different video endpoints

Solution:• Cisco-led, end-to-end networking architecture and collaborative

solutions with engagement from regional partners• Cisco TelePresence delivers an immersive, in-person video

experience for greater collaboration in critical global discussions• Video conferencing interoperability enables increased participation

from non-Cisco endpoints and web collaboration increases inclusiveness in virtual participation at conference events

Results:• Successful deployment and operation of large scale

communications network, which in record time was built from ground up and supporting the world leaders’ negotiations on climate change combat

• Substantially enhanced scope and scale of conference, increasing inclusiveness among those who could not attend in person

• Demonstration and verification of the perspectives in reducing physical travel to global conferences by leveraging Cisco TelePresence and web collaboration tools like Cisco WebEx

• Facilitated impactful conversations, improved productivity and generated positive response from all participants, regardless of endpoint type

attendees, providing this kind of access was especially critical at COP17. The large and disparate nature of the participating parties, the busy schedules of the political and scientific leaders whose presence was needed, and the urgency of the topic all combined to make video technology a top priority.

Thus, choosing the right technology partner would be a critical driver of the conference’s success, because effective communication among participants, and between participants and stakeholders not physically at the conference, was essential for productive negotiations.

The guiding principles of the engagement were to enable COP17 participants to meet “face-to-face” with those outside of Durban. The United Nations also wanted to provide an easy mechanism for participants to schedule meetings, and provide ample locations for remote participants to join COP17 from telepresence rooms around the world, as well as from their own desktops. By accomplishing all this, the conference organizations hoped to promote sustainability, increase inclusiveness and productivity, while reducing overall travel required.

SolutionAs the host country, South Africa was responsible for the venue and for providing all support services. When it began looking for a technology partner to help support the network and communication capabilities for the event , the South African government wanted a vendor that could:

• Build and operate an end-to-end mission critical communications network solution that was reliable, secure and available 24/7 over the course of the conference

• Provide bandwidth capable of supporting dozens of simultaneous online conference sessions as well as typical phone and Internet traffic for a conference with apprx. 20,000 expected attendees

• Provide high definition and top quality video communication tools and web conferencing capabilities. Also to ensure that the inclusiveness in virtual collaboration from COP17 would support interoperability with multi-vendor video conferencing systems

• Protect the network from malware, hackers, and the kind of security attacks that are typical for high-profile events

Deploying an End-to-End Solution “Cisco was uniquely positioned to provide a complete end-to-end solution with major focus on networking and collaboration tools needed to extend the reach of the event,” says Charles Shawcross, Coordinator for the Information Technology Services Programme, UNFCCC.

When it came time to begin the project, “we basically had an empty shell at the convention center,” says Henrik Michel Kjaer, Cisco corporate lead for the COP17 event. “So it required building a massive event network from the ground up.” Cisco provided everything from the network architecture design to the core switching

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Customer Case Study

“If it wasn’t for Cisco TelePresence, we would not have been able to conduct a live press conference and inform our community back home about our activities at the COP17 conference. This technology is not only important for reducing travel and CO2 emissions, but also for making better use of people’s time and available resources.” Martha Delgado PeraltaSecretary of the EnvironmentMexico City Government

products, data security devices, to the fully meshed wireless access network. On top of this infrastructure, Cisco layered its collaboration portfolio, including Cisco TelePresence®, Cisco® TelePresence Exchange System, Cisco WebEx® technology, and Cisco Unified Communications.

This deployment represented a massive cross-functional endeavor within Cisco, including Cisco Services, product business units and technology groups, and IT specialists, and between Cisco and its partners. Dimension Data acted as the systems integrator, helping build and install the physical equipment, while service provider Tata Communications and its local subsidiary Neotel, facilitated the general bandwidth for the conference (2 GB with redundant access to global Internet exchanges) and also the TelePresence connections through their vast global network of video inter-exchanges. All technology worked as planned, and thanks to a robust Cisco security framework, malicious network attacks and inappropriate peer-to-peer bandwidth consumption were successfully blocked.

Using Cisco TelePresence and Cisco WebEx, conference attendees engaged with people on six continents through in-person video experiences and web collaboration. In total, Cisco collaboration technologies facilitated more than 300 meetings and side events at COP17. Delegations from individual parties were able to give daily updates to their ministers. Ministers and government officials briefed journalists in their home countries. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) conducted briefings with supporters.

Media organizations brought together experts, government officials, and business executives to debate key issues associated with climate change. And because of the reliability and availability of the Cisco core network as well as the quality of the Cisco collaboration solutions, remote participants were able to carry on natural dialogues and advance their agendas easily without increasing their carbon footprints.

ResultsThe result was a highly successful conference. COP17 today represents a milestone in the ability of the international community to work together on climate change by leveraging virtual collaboration capabilities. The meeting was the second-largest since the inaugural COP event was held nearly 16 years ago, and members negotiated key advances in implementing the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Action Plan, and the Cancun Agreements. Among other achievements, the Parties agreed to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change by 2015.

COP17 attracted more than 19,000 participants, including government officials, ministers from all countries and several heads of state, representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations, civil NGOs, and members of the media. The event was the largest political conference ever held on the continent of Africa, and the largest global political and sustainability event in 2011.

“Working with Cisco and its partners on the general network deployment and operation at COP17 was a great experience,” says Shawcross. ”There was certainly a high level of comfort to know that UNFCCC and the host government were supported by the world’s networking giant.”

Shawcross continues, “COP17 participants leveraged the Cisco collaboration tools for various purposes, and it was tremendously well received. At UNFCCC, we hope to make future use of telepresence technology to reduce emissions and to cut travel costs and time, while still having effective, efficient meetings that will help further

Customer Case Study

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our quest of fighting climate change. If industry can do things like design and build a new airliner using distributed resources worldwide, then we can certainly take advantage of the same approach in helping the nations of the world respond to climate change.”

More Options, More Flexibility for ParticipantsThe interoperability of Cisco TelePresence was instrumental in expanding the reach of the event to people and organizations far beyond the scope of those who attended physically. For example, the Swedish Minister of Environment used Cisco TelePresence to meet with students in Sweden to discuss climate change concerns and COP17 actions, an event that was recorded by Swedish National TV. Students at Yale University were also able to dial in to an executive government conference briefing using a non-Cisco video conferencing endpoint.

The UNFCCC Executive Director Christiana Figueres used Cisco TelePresence and WebEx solutions to meet with more than 50 students from youth organizations around the world. And Bloggers’ Lounges allowed members of the press to engage in telepresence sessions on demand using Cisco TelePresence EX90 desktop units.

“If it wasn’t for Cisco TelePresence, we would not have been able to conduct a live press conference and inform our community back home about our activities at the COP 17 conference,” says Martha Delgado Peralta, secretary of the environment for Mexico City. “This technology is not only important for reducing travel and CO2 emissions, but also for making better use of people’s time and available resources.”

Other participants, such as Zaid Shopeju, executive director at the Youth Vision Alliance Network (YVAN), were equally impressed by the technology. “The Cisco TelePresence sessions were so real and lifelike, it was mind blowing to see how clear and crisp the video quality was,” he says. “It is an important tool that has broken the barrier between me and my colleagues back home, and I look forward to using telepresence again in the future.”

Next StepsUNFCCC is now in talks with Cisco to help host future COP events, as well as three mini-conferences that are smaller congregations of 2000 to 8000 attendees. “One of our objectives for the long term is to support the endeavor of making these events more and more virtual,” says Cisco’s Henrik Michel Kjaer. “Given that the ultimate goal of the UN Climate Change Conferences is to manage climate change through international negotiations, we are eager to give people the technologies and tools they need to travel less. They’ll be more productive, they will demonstrate to the world that they are ‘walking the talk,’ and it will be good for the planet.”

Customer Case Study

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For More Information• To find out more about Cisco TelePresence, go to:

http://www.cisco.com/web/telepresence.

• To read other success stories, go to: http://www.cisco.com/web/telepresence/customer-transformations.html.

Product ListTelepresence• Cisco TelePresence Endpoints

- Total Immersion Experience• Cisco TelePresence System 3210, 3010

- Multi-Purpose Experience• Cisco TelePresence MX Series (MX200)

- Personal Experience• Cisco TelePresence System 1100• Cisco TelePresence EX Series (EX90)• Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence

• Cisco TelePresence Infrastructure - Cisco TelePresence Exchange System (through Tata Communications) - Cisco VCS Expressway - Cisco VCS Expressway Control - Cisco TelePresence server

Collaboration Applications• Cisco WebEx Meeting Center• Cisco Jabber™

Unified Communications• Cisco Unified Communications Manager• Cisco Unified IP Phones

Routing and Switching• Cisco 7200 Series Routers• Cisco Catalyst® 6509, 4500, 3650, 2950 Series Switches

Security• Cisco ASA 5500 Adaptive Security Appliances• Cisco IronPort®

• Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)/Intrusion Detection System (IDS)

Customer Case Study

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