The game-changing potential of digitalization for sustainability: possibilities, perils, and pathways
Sustain Sci
The game-changing potential of digitalization for sustainability: possibilities, perils, and pathways
Peter Seele 0 1
Irina Lock 0 1
0 University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , Netherlands
1 Sustainability and Digitalization: A Game-Changer? Possibilities , Perils, Pathways
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When in 2015, 193 countries agreed on 17 sustainable
development goals, the nations’ delegates signed a
challenging agenda aimed to render this planet livable for future
generations within the next 15 years. This process has just
begun and implementation and dialogue with different
stakeholders is required to bring the SDG to live. This is
true, particularly given the past steps to strive for
sustainability, which have not yet led to groundbreaking levels
of achieving more sustainability (or less unsustainability).
Despite many efforts in developing and developed
countries, none of the member states of the United Nations has
achieved all goals yet
(GeSI 2016)
, so the call for
intensifying engagement and transforming societies remains open.
This is where Big Data and Digitalization comes in: Digital
technologies in the form of e-health services, robotics, or
emission reduction solutions could help individuals,
organizations, and nations achieve a more sustainable planet in
light of the sustainable development goals. Given the
stagnation of sustainable development, the overall
“sustainability gap”
(Lubin and Esty 2014)
continues to be a major
issue, as the overconsumption of natural resources and its
harmful consequences threaten the basis of our existence
and that of future generations
(WCED 1987)
.
Parallel to this development stands the increasing speed
and spread of digital technology in all areas of life.
Information and communication (ICT) technology constitute our
new “digital age”
(Schmidt and Cohen 2013)
,
encompassing a richness of soft- and hardware and linked processes.
Analyses of genetic sequences, personal health data, phone
Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
records, social media profiles, and many more
(Boyd and
Crawford 2012)
have altered the way humans interact with
each other and with their natural environment. Digital
technology, as in the example of Big Data, offers new
possibilities and pathways of how to shape the future and research
(Shah et al. 2015)
, for instance, through the “information
civilization” brought about by monopolistic structures in
the corporate sphere
(Zuboff 2015)
. Algorithmic capacities
allow for data processing and analysis that open up unseen
predictive capabilities, and thus a “time-ontological shift”
(Seele 2016a)
. Digitalization has (positively as well as
negatively) incalculable potential to help achieve sustainability
of the planetary and human system, or at least help reduce
the negative impact of people. ICT and Big Data can help
promote sustainability
(Gijzen 2013; Hampton et al. 2013)
,
because the societal complexity of the planetary nervous
system is strongly connected and these systems may lead
to cascading effects that increase vulnerability (Helbing
2012). Via a big data-driven “transnational sustainability
agency”
(Seele 2016b)
or a digital “global participatory
platform”, for instance, digitalization can help increase
(strong) sustainability in the environmental, social and
economic spheres
(Helbing 2012)
. Hence, digitalization bears
consequences for transparency and accountability that open
up entirely new ways to shape, monitor, communicate, and
govern sustainability
(e.g., Heemsbergen 2016)
. In
conclusion, both megatrends, sustainability and digitalization,
impose major transitions on our world and how we picture
it.
In this regard, sustainability science is the scientific way
of gathering data to analyze pathways towards a (more)
sustainable world, by taking into account future
generations. Given its transformative nature, sustainability is
expected to adapt to the new possibilities and perils of the
digital age, or vice versa, digitalization is the driver that
changes sustainability. Whether and in how far this
transformation through digitalization facilitates or impedes
the development of a more sustainable world, however, is
still unknown. The purpose of this special issue is
therefore to shed light on the different possibilities, perils, and
pathways the digital revolution can bring for sustainability
and sustainability science and intends to address the overall
question: In what ways is digitalization a game changer for
sustainability?
The papers in this special issue deal with the impact of
digitalization on sustainability in manifold ways, applying
an array of disciplinary, methodological, cultural, and
topical perspectives.
Analyzing e-participation of citizens in environmentally
sensitive projects through ICTs, He et al. (2016)
investigated the potentials of digital communication technology in
a Chinese setting. The article “E-participation for
environmental sustainability in (...truncated)