A Comprehensive Survey on 6G and Beyond for Climate Action: Toward Sustainable Connectivity

This paper addresses the urgent question of how emerging telecommunication networks, particularly beyond 5G and 6G networks, can be designed and governed to support climate action while limiting their own environmental footprint. We provide a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary analysis of the role of telecommunications in climate change adaptation, mitigation and sectoral decarbonization, going beyond existing studies that typically focus on isolated technologies or single application domains. We review international climate and telecom policy frameworks, evaluate emerging 5G/6G capabilities, and analyze regulatory pathways for green networks to assess how next-generation connectivity, AI-based energy optimization, remote monitoring systems, and renewable integration can reduce emissions and enhance network resilience. Our findings organize these developments into a novel three-pillar framework that (i) clarifies how telecommunications-enabled climate-smart solutions underpin adaptation through early warning systems, disaster response coordination and infrastructure resilience, (ii) shows how they drive mitigation across smart buildings and cities, precision agriculture and smart power systems, and (iii) identifies concrete levers, such as energy-aware network design, energy-efficient architectures and network automation, for reducing the carbon footprint of the sector itself. The resulting framework offers policymakers, infrastructure planners and telecom operators a structured foundation for aligning network evolution with climate targets and for shaping future regulatory and standardization efforts around climate-smart connectivity.