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I’ve been away a while, and much has happened.
The UN’s been finalising a treaty on cybercrime and moving towards a new Compact on digital development. AI’s continued to develop rapidly amid growing concerns about potential impacts and suggestions that its potential’s being overhyped. Social media’s having an impact on elections and accused of stirring violence in several countries (including mine).
Many themes to write about over the coming months, but I come back this week to an underlying issue that the digital community needs to focus on much more than it has done so far: environmental impact.
The Digital Economy Report
UN Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) latest Digital Economy Report’s concerned with Shaping an environmentally sustainable and inclusive digital future. It’s a major intervention from within the UN system to put sustainability at the heart of digital development – especially important as it comes from an agency that’s concerned with stimulating economic growth and with the interests of developing countries in particular.
Full disclosure: I worked with UNCTAD and others in preparing the report. And it’s a theme I’ve worked on over many years.
The central message
What’s UNCTAD’s message? At its heart’s the recognition that digital development won’t be economically sustainable unless it’s environmentally sustainable.
We talk a lot about new technologies’ potential, but that potential cuts both ways. There are things we’d like to see, but also things we find alarming.
The language that we use about digitalisation doesn’t help where the environment’s concerned. Terms like “the cloud” suggest that digital development is immaterial, when in reality it depends on infrastructure networks, data centres and an ever-growing range of digital devices which are all physical resources.
These have substantial environmental impacts. Those impacts are growing, and are growing faster with each new wave of innovation. They will accelerate further as computationally intensive technologies associated with AI become widespread.
Ignoring the environmental impacts that arise from this, UNCTAD insists, is and will be counterproductive. We need to “confront the environmental consequences of our digital lifestyles” and set a framework for digital development that’s sustainable, not unsustainable.
What’s more, we need to do so in a way that’s equitable and inclusive. At the moment, the economic benefits of digitalisation are mostly felt in richer countries; the environmental downsides in developing countries that are locked into lower value parts of the digital economy such as mineral extraction and waste disposal.
What are the problems?
The report focuses on four core questions of sustainability.
First, digital development makes use of scarce resources.
Scarce minerals are required for digital devices. Their supply is (obviously) not infinite. Already, countries with digital production industries compete aggressively for better access to them. Extraction in developing countries is often exploitative and dangerous. Far too little recycling of scarce minerals is taking place.
Second, digital products and services consume increasing amounts of energy and are thereby growing contributors to climate change. Energy’s consumed in both the production and use of digital resources – in making every new smartphone that is bought and in every Google search. And its growth will grow more rapidly as more services are introduced that require more data transmission and more computation to make them work effectively.
Data centres are important factors in both these cases. They’re the material reality of what we call the cloud, and they are burgeoning in scale as computationally intensive applications, such as generative AI, grow. As well as electricity and minerals in their computers they require large amounts of water, itself a scarce resource in many places, to cool equipment.
The third key question concerns waste and pollution. Rapid technological development leads to rapid churn in digital devices. Many end up in landfill or picked over for components in unsafe workplaces. Toxic chemicals are problematic in both cases. Effective recycling is very limited.
And the fourth’s to do with the demand side: with consumers. E-commerce is a boon for many, making products available that were previously difficult to find. But its business models encourage overconsumption, with indirect environmental impacts in storage, packaging and transport.
What’s to be done?
UNCTAD’s report sets out a range of measures that could be taken to address these problems and build a more sustainable digital economy, reflecting the principles of sustainable consumption and production in the UN’s 12th Sustainable Development Goal. There’s a table of these towards the end of the summary report. I’ll comment here on six broad themes – building on, not just reflecting, what’s in the report.
A new mindset
The first is that we need a new mindset, not least within the digital community.
Digital development will be fundamental to the economy as it develops, but it can’t be seen in isolation. Digital development without environmental sustainability – without tackling the problems identified above – won’t be economically sustainable.
We talk a lot within the digital community about multistakeholder participation, but the multistakeholder institutions that we have are primarily concerned with what is digital. That’s not sufficient. Environmental impacts and environmental outcomes need to be central to thinking about digital development if the latter is to be sustainable and to contribute to the common good.
That new mindset’s required across the board – in government, in business and among consumers.
New business models
It implies new ways of thinking within business, focused not just on business priorities of enabling innovation and maximising profit but on environmental and social externalities and impacts.
Current business models don’t incentivise environmental efficiency: if anything, the drive to stay ahead of business rivals and maximise profitability do the reverse.
Sustainability should become central to the way in which businesses think about the entire lifecycle of products and services, how they are designed, deployed, delivered and their final disposal.
Technical standards should reflect environmental as well as technological efficiency: reducing the use of scarce resources, requiring less electricity, facilitating reuse and recycling. Product and service development in corporations, and in e-commerce, should seek to minimise environmental impacts and maximise resource efficiency.
A (more) circular economy
Central to these goals, the report argues, should be progress towards “a circular digital economy, characterised by responsible consumption and production, renewable energy use and comprehensive e-waste management.”
The digital economy is currently linear rather than circular, following a model that can be summarised as ‘extract-make-dispose’. Scarce resources need to be carefully managed if they are not to be wasted and lead to conflict within and between countries as demand for them intensifies. That requires coordinated action at both ends of the product lifecycle – extraction and disposal/recycling.
The energy requirements of a more digital future are going to be intense. Large data centres have become more energy efficient and increasingly use renewable sources of electricity, but demand is certain to grow (and use of renewable energy sources in data centres is only beneficial to society if those renewables are not diverted from other users).
Sustainable consumption
Consumers also have a major part to play. Digitalisation has tended to increase consumption, as products and services become more readily available. Greater and more equitable availability of services is desirable, but overconsumption and the waste it generates are not.
Consumer choice can be influenced by many factors, from price and reliability to fashion and longevity. The case for fostering a culture of “sufficiency” is increasingly being made. But business models also have a place to play here – for instance by avoiding programmed obsolescence, making it easier to repair, update or reuse existing devices rather than replacing them; and by making it less attractive to buy and return goods on a speculative basis.
Policy and regulation
None of this can be achieved without substantive policy and regulation.
Digital corporations and e-commerce businesses focus on maximising shareholder value through profit maximisation and market strategy. That’s their mandate, and the way that markets work mean that it’s often focused on the shorter term.
But the interests of society are broader than shareholder value. Citizens are concerned about the quality of the society in which they live as well as individual circumstances. The quality of social development increasingly depends on environmental sustainability – as, in the medium and longer term, does the economic viability of digital and other businesses.
The role of government is crucial here in establishing a sustainable balance between the needs of society in general, the personal desires of consumers and the commercial priorities of digital businesses.
Incorporating environmental concerns in business decision-making requires a public policy framework that’s likely to include legislative and regulatory requirements (for instance on the location and energy requirements of data centres and the conduct of e-commerce), fiscal incentives and information and awareness campaigns.
Digital businesses have often sought to resist regulation, almost on principle. They should recognise its importance to society. Multistakeholder approaches to policymaking should not be seen as ways of freeing businesses from external responsibility but ensuring that innovation facilitates the common good.
International cooperation
And, lastly, none of this can be achieved without greater international cooperation. As UNCTAD’s Secretary-General puts it in her preface to the report, it requires comprehensive international frameworks that “promote sustainable digital practices and empower developing countries to participate fully in the digital economy.”
That global participation’s critical, not just for reasons of equity – ensuring that all countries benefit from digital development, and that it does not widen existing development and digital divides.
It’s critical because the digital economy itself is global – because the scarce resources that are extracted in developing countries feed into global networks; because the carbon emissions that arise from energy consumption affect all countries; because a circular digital economy requires international frameworks that address international trade, the development of environmentally sustainable standards for digital resources, and the recycling and recovery of materials at the end of product lifecycles.
In summary
Digital development does not take place within a digital silo. It affects every aspect of society and its impacts will be fundamental. Environmental impacts are critical to this. If the positive dimensions of digital development are to be sustainable, they need to be environmentally sustainable.
That’s a challenge, and it’s not an easy one, but it’s one that needs to be addressed, and now, by all stakeholders. This year’s Digital Economy Report is an important contribution and should be widely read.
David Souter writes a fortnightly column for APC, looking at different aspects of the information society, development and rights. David’s pieces take a fresh look at many of the issues that concern APC and its members, with the aim of provoking discussion and debate. Issues covered include internet governance and sustainable development, human rights and the environment, policy, practice and the use of ICTs by individuals and communities.