[In English] Luego de un proceso participativo con organizaciones miembro de la Asociación para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones (APC), APC y el Instituto Latinoamericano de Terraformación escribimos un aporte conjunto para el nuevo proceso de gobernanza digital de la ONU: el Pacto Digital Global (CDG) donde destacamos los impactos socioambientales de la digitalización. Además, en base a ese documento, el 14 de junio de 2023 realizamos una presentación de tres minutos en el “GDC Thematic Deep-Dive on Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, donde los Estados, el sector privado y la sociedad civil compartieron sus perspectivas. Esta fue nuestra intervención:
El siglo XXI está marcado por dos grandes procesos: la crisis climática y ecológica y la rápida digitalización del planeta.
Alcanzar los objetivos de desarrollo sostenible no sólo puede significar centrarse en las posibilidades positivas de la digitalización, sino también tomarse en serio las repercusiones socioambientales de las tecnologías digitales para no poner en peligro los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) como “ciudades y comunidades sostenibles”, “consumo y producción responsables”, “acción por el clima” y “vida en la tierra”.
After a participatory process with Association for Progressive Communication (APC) member organizations, APC and the Latin American Institute of Terraforming write a joint input for the new UN digital governance process: the Global Digital Compact (GDC) where we highlight the socio-environmental impacts of digitization. Also, based on that document, on June 14th, 2023, we made a three-minute presentation at the “GDC Thematic Deep-Dive on Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” where States, the private sector, and civil society shared their perspectives. This was our intervention:
The 21st century is marked by two major processes: the climate and ecological crisis and the fast digitalization of the planet.
Achieving sustainable development goals cannot only mean focusing on the possibilities of digitization but also taking the socio-environmental impacts of digital technologies seriously not to jeopardize SDGs such as “sustainable cities and communities,” “responsible consumption and production,” “climate action,” and “life on land.”
A 5-minute opening remark by Paz Peña to introduce the workshop “Transforming Technology Frameworks for Human Rights and Earth Justice” at RightsCon, Costa Rica. This workshop featured invaluable interventions by APC, Sula Batsu, and Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira.
The technologies global production chain begins in El Estor, Guatemala, with nickel and rare earth elements extraction to support the world's digital infrastructure. Its mining has polluted Lake Izabal, exterminated biodiversity, and sickened and depleted indigenous populations, but in the name of techno-capitalism and its progress, who cares.
[En castellano] A 5-minute intervention by Paz Peña at the beginning of the workshop “Tech Cartographies: fighting digital colonialism and seeking social environmental justice”, organized by Coding Rights in the context of RightsCon in Costa Rica.
The map developed by Coding Rights clearly shows the material basis of digital technologies and how this material base has a differentiated powerdynamic between North and South, but also between East and West. And the map makes more visible the global chain of production of digital technologies that, as in all capitalism, displaces the socio-environmental effects to the most marginalized populations.
But I would also like to reflect on something crucial for any analysis of digitalization in the 21st century: the climate and ecological crisis we are experiencing, but in its geopolitical sense.
This January 25, 2023, a new version of Privacy Camp, an annual conference jointly organized by EDRi, VUB-LSTS, Privacy Salon vzw and the Institute for European Studies at USL-B, was held.
Representing civil society, we made a five-minute statement at the event “Digital technologies in the green transition: Friend or foe?” as one of the ministerial sessions of the OECD Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting held in Gran Canaria, Spain. You can read it here:
According to the World Economic Forum (which brings together the most powerful elite of world capitalism), “a twin transition approach recognizes that there is a huge and largely untapped opportunity for technology and data to drive sustainability goals. Rather than treating digital and sustainability in isolation, a twin transition strategy combines these critical functions to unlock huge benefits in terms of efficiency and productivity”.
At our institute, we are very critical of this concept. And we had the opportunity to make a two-minute statement at the public event “Twin Transition (Green and Digital) – Roundtable” -on the “stakeholder day”- in the context of the OECD Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting held in Gran Canaria, Spain. You can read it here:
If you are in Barcelona, you can go to the Santa Monica arts center from June 9 to August 21 to see the exhibition “La irrupció” (free admission) curated by Marta Gracia, Jara Rocha, and Enric Puig Punyet. More than twenty international and local works will open a dialogue about the complex circumstances we are living on the planet after the disruption of the pandemic.
Jara Rocha <3 also invited us to think about an itinerary, which you can do in person from now until August 21, 2022. Curiously, as many of these works are digital, you can also do the itinerary remotely, completing the pieces from your imagination, ghosts, and desires. You can find it right here.
Si estás en Barcelona, puedes ir al centro de artes Santa Mònica, del 9 de junio al 21 de agosto, a ver la muestra “La irrupció” (entrada gratuita) comisariada por Marta Gracia, Jara Rocha y Enric Puig Punyet. Más de una veintena de obras internacionales y locales abrirán un diálogo sobre las complejas circunstancias que estamos viviendo en el planeta tras la disrupción de la pandemia.
Jara Rocha <3, además, nos invitó a pensar un itinerario de obras, el que puedes hacer presencialmente desde ahora al 21 de agosto del 2022. Curiosamente, como muchas de estas obras son digitales, también puedes hacer el itinerario de forma remota, completando las obras desde tu imaginación, fantasmas y deseos. Acá mismo lo encuentras.
In general, it's challenging to compete with the imaginaries imposed by hegemonic digital technology where concepts such as “digital revolution” and “disruption” champion every time a problematic aspect is raised. The first reading of the CODES Action Plan draft, in this sense, raised an alert: once again, the mere (commercial) promise of digital technologies seemed to have more relevance than the scientific evidence on the effects of digitization (those we know and, also, very important in the planetary limits in which we find ourselves, those we do not know) on the environment. We made this apprehension known in our comments. On that occasion, we stated:
”...if CODES really wants to give greater importance to the promises of digitization concerning sustainability rather than to the environmental damage and challenges that lie ahead due to the deployment of the technologies themselves, we urge that this strategy be rethought for at least two reasons. On the one hand, and as various academic literature has recognized, the digital promise of the future is an integral part of the “capitalism as usual” engine that this same document points to as a problematic attitude. And on the other, because the environmental damage of digital technologies is real, as are its challenges, and it seems unrealistic – especially in line with official IPCC documentation – that it is not given at least the same level of importance in the text.”
We’re glad that a certain empty optimism about digitization has been left behind in the final document. A turnaround is visible from the very first pages:
