Latin American Institute of Terraforming
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.
The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) has finally published its final Action Plan. We discuss some of its aspects based on our comments on its preliminary draft.
Good news for us:
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:
(before)
(after)
El informe del Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) llamado “Climate Change 2022. Mitigation of Climate Change”, reconoce que la falta de una gobernanza adecuada de la revolución digital puede obstaculizar el papel que la digitalización podría desempeñar en el apoyo a la consecución de estrictos objetivos de objetivos de mitigación.
En este sentido, hace un llamado a aplicar de forma coordinada instrumentos políticos que puedan contribuir a acelerar el cambio en la dirección deseada. El cambio tecnológico dirigido, la regulación y las políticas públicas pueden ayudar a dirigir la digitalización, la economía compartida y la economía circular hacia la mitigación del cambio climático.
Asimismo, entiende que la digitalización debe desplegarse en el contexto de la disminución de la demanda del consumo para bajar el uso de energía.
Para el Instituto Latinoamericano de Terraformación, el informe es un avance en comprender que la digitalización no puede sostenerse solo en la promesa tecnológica hegemónica de un futuro sustentable, y necesita de políticas públicas audaces y basadas en evidencia independiente y multidisciplinaria.
Si quieres leer nuestro informe completo [haz clic acá].
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report called “Climate Change 2022. Mitigation of Climate Change” recognizes that the lack of adequate governance of the digital revolution may hinder the role that digitization could play in supporting the achievement of stringent mitigation target goals.
This regard calls for the coordinated implementation of policy instruments that can help accelerate change in the desired direction. Targeted technological change, regulation, and public policy can help steer digitalization, the sharing economy, and the circular economy towards climate change mitigation.
It also understands that digitalization must be deployed in the context of decreasing consumer demand to lower energy consumption.
For the Latin American Institute of Terraforming, the report is a breakthrough in understanding that digitalization cannot be sustained only on the hegemonic technological promise of a sustainable future and needs bold public policies based on independent and multidisciplinary evidence.
Read our full report [here].
Perhaps World Water Day, celebrated this March 22, could be an excuse to talk about how fundamental this element is for the deployment of digital technologies and how its intensive use brings socio-environmental conflicts that we are not used to hearing about. Yet, is not digitization and the digital economy the necessary step towards sustainability? Will not technological innovation be the same that will solve the intensive use of resources such as water?
Latin America, in this scenario, has a varied catalog of socio-environmental conflicts due to the use of water by digital technologies. Just to name a few: water mining for lithium extraction in the Atacama Desert, a fundamental element for the batteries of our digital devices, which has forced the displacement of indigenous populations as well as other native species; the intensive use of water by hyper-scale data centers (the cloud! ) to cool their equipment which could affect human consumption of water as well as the feeding of entire ecosystems such as wetlands; to which is added the intensive hydro-energy use to mine crypto which, in the middle of the energy transition, raises the question of how to decide socially in what clean energy is invested.
Quizás el Día Mundial del Agua, que se celebra este 22 de marzo, pueda ser una excusa para conversar sobre lo fundamental que es este elemento para el despliegue de las tecnologías digitales y cómo su uso intensivo trae conflictos socioambientales que no estamos acostumbrados a escuchar. ¿No es acaso la digitalización y la economía digital el paso necesario para la sustentabilidad? ¿No será la innovación tecnológica la misma que solucionará los usos intensivos de recursos como el agua?
América Latina, en este panorama, tiene un variado catálogo de conflictos socioambientales debido al uso del agua por las tecnologías digitales. Solo por nombrar algunas, están: la minería hídrica con la que se extrae el litio en el desierto de Atacama, elemento fundamental para las baterías de nuestros dispositivos digitales y que ha forzado desplazamiento de poblaciones indígenas además de otras especies nativas; el uso intensivo de agua de los data centers a hiper-esacala (¡la nube!) para enfriar sus equipos y que afectarían el consumo humano de agua como la alimentación de ecosistemas fundamentales como los humedales; a lo que se agrega el uso hidro energético intensivo para minar cripto que, en plena transición energética, levanta la pregunta de cómo se decide socialmente en qué se invierten las energías limpias.
The UN Secretary-General has said that “the digital revolution can be steered to combat climate change and advance global sustainability, environmental stewardship and human well-being.”
For that reason, the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) initiative has been recently launched as an important part of the broader follow-up to the Secretary-General's Roadmap on Digital Cooperation. CODES was initiated by UNEP, UNDP, the International Science Council, the German Environment Agency, the Kenyan Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Future Earth and Sustainability in the Digital Age, and now is leading a global multi-stakeholder process.
In this context, its first mission is to co-develop an “Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age” to identify the key shifts and strategic priorities needed to harness digital technologies to accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable development. Taking advantage of one of the last spaces to present observations to this plan, the Latin American Institute of Terraforming sent a document with its comments this month. Among the most critical points that we believe can be reinforced in the draft presented, we highlight: