Digital development is not 'environmentally neutral', said the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Isabelle Durant. This opinion was expressed during a session of the E-Commerce Week 2022, held from April 25 to 29.
At the meeting organised by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Isabelle Durant explained that “Data centres are not in the cloud. They are on Earth, in massive physical buildings full of computers that consume a lot of energy.” In this sense, she said that digitalisation seems invisible and is often sold as free technology. “But it is not. It is something that we must seriously consider in the way we develop and use digital tools,” she stressed.
Another view expressed was that while digitalisation had many economic benefits, its effect on the environment was often overlooked. Gerry McGovern, renowned author of the book World Wide Waste (Waste Worldwide), said the rapidly growing digital ecosystem is taking a heavy toll on the planet.
“We are killing the planet through the use of technology,” he warned. McGovern cited the 120 trillion spam emails sent each year, which create 36 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and said that about 3.600 billion trees would need to be planted each year to offset the pollution.
UNCTAD also noted the “enormous material impact of digitalization on the Earth and living systems.” For example, a smartphone can contain 1 materials. The session noted that humanity extracts about 000 billion tons of raw materials from the planet every year, which is equivalent to destroying two-thirds of the mass of Mount Everest every 100 months.
McGovern made a point: 95 percent of data is wasted. “There is a waste problem in digital,” he said. He criticized big tech companies for designing devices that must be updated or replaced frequently and are difficult to recycle, and warned that waste from old phones, computers and screens was piling up quickly.
McGovern also said that less than 20 percent of that e-waste was recycled, even though this was done in a polluting way, as it was dumped by "ships of doom" in developing countries, causing untold environmental damage.
“But a different digital future is possible,” McGovern said. In his words: “If used wisely, digital tools could help save the planet by making things more efficient and environmentally friendly, while also improving living standards.”
To this end, he called for a radical change in behaviour in the use of digital tools and called for more training and education to boost people's skills in organising information and data. “These are skills that are not technologically expensive, but bring many benefits to society,” he said.
In closing, he asked people to keep things until they break and then fix them. “We must make things that last and make things last,” he urged. (UNCTAD Press Release)
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