By Paz Peña, coordinator of the Latin American Institute of Terraforming.
Arrive and operate. Or, as the Minister of Science says, data centers in Chile are ready to “plug and play.” Days ago, I attended a virtual meeting in Spain, where we discussed regulatory trends related to data centers. They asked me about the situation in Latin America and Chile. I replied – to the surprise of some foreigners- that trends here are toward deregulation. There are many examples, but let's talk about Chile in light of LaBot news.
[Aquí en español] The zero draft of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) was published a few days ago. Regarding its position on digitalization and its environmental impacts, we at the Latin American Institute of Terraforming believe it is important to emphasize the following:
[En castellano] Thinking digital technology for the climate and ecological crisis from the Southern Cone. How do we terraform the rural areas of countries like Paraguay suffering acutely from the climate and ecological crisis? What role do digital technologies play in this terraforming? In 2023, we partnered with TEDIC and the Kuña Aty Women's Committee of Táva Guaraní (both Paraguayan organizations) on a project to link digital and energy transitions from concepts such as climate justice.
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.
