On 2nd September, FIDAL project was in Valencia to attend the IEEE PIMRC 1st International Workshop on Value-Driven Ethical Networking In 6G (Ethicnet). Our colleague Katrina Petersen joined as pannellists in the final Final panel on "Sustainability in networking: the path ahead". She brought a social science perspective on how to 6G is deeply connected to societal values, those which form the foundation of our current approach to sustainability and leaving no one behind. 

 When asked to discuss what she sees as pressing challenges here, Katrina raised the need to clarify and agree what we, as the ICT ecosystem, want to change and make better as well as how can we better build incentives and motivations to do this work. As a whole, Katrina challenged the community to think about how doing the right thing for sustainability could become central to 6G business models, not an externality or something that could be a trade-off for performance or profit? 

As a whole, the panelists agreed that engaging sustainability requires:

• looking beyond energy efficiency (even as energy efficiency is vital to 6G’s contribution towards sustainability);

• looking beyond the cool gadget;

• looking at what really engaging digital inclusivity requires;

• designing use cases with sustainability at the centre (instead of technology) to better understand how 6G really enables societal value; and

• bringing together experts from different disciplinary perspectives to understand what’s at stake for who.