Podcast

Episode 51 - Exploring the digital revolution paradox from a UN perspective with Paz Pena and Pablo José Gamez Cersosimo

February 03, 2025 - 2 minutes reading
GreenIO Blog - Episode 51 - Exploring the digital revolution paradox from a UN perspective with Paz Pena and Pablo José Gamez Cersosimo

#E51: Exploring the digital revolution paradox from a UN perspective with Paz Pena and Pablo José Gamez Cersosimo. Both worked on the report, as Paz is a consultant on technologies, gender and social justice, and Pablo’s expertise includes digital awareness, human online behaviour, digital sustainability and digital pollution.

The Digital Divide: A Growing Gap

UNCTAD's Digital Economy Report 2024 is a report grounded in science yet constructed with a solid ethical foundation. The report hits hard at the lack of global equity of digital services, citing ‘an unequal ecological exchange’. Currently, there is no universal methodology adopted to deal with the digital ecosystem, in particular the growing and disproportionate environmental impacts of the digital economy on the Global South. There is now an urgent need for environmentally sustainable and inclusive digitalization strategies.

Geopolitical interests

The digital economy is a very concentrated market, whereby only a handful of companies, mostly in the global North, actually develop digital products and services. So the majority of any added value created in this economy is captured by those digitally advanced countries, yet the social environmental costs of digitization are paid by the Global South. Once again the Global North is accessing vital resources found in the Global South, and,  worryingly, old colonial relationships are starting to be reactivated, (although the report does not directly use such terms).

Natural resources

Predictions show that by 2050, we will need more than 150 billion tons of minerals annually, including 50 new lithium mines, 60 new nickel mines, and the production of rare earth metals must increase 12-fold. Practices such as illegal or unsustainable mining are increasing, and conflict is on the rise with local communities having to fight for access to basic rights such as water resources. For Pablo, “ the more virtual we become, the more potable water we need for that. And that means that our digital world is literally liquids…… It is the water that makes virtuality possible”. There is also fear that digitization is actually lowering standards of work and having a negative impact on mental health through being permanently connected. E-waste is also a huge issue, with the world generating 62 billion kilograms of e-waste in 2022.

Spotlight on Latin America

In Latin America, one of the biggest climate effects today is drought and Paz explains how Chile is suffering a historical 30-year drought. The north of Chili is also one of the biggest global resources of lithium, feeding the supply chain of batteries and resulting green energies. The semiconductor industry is growing fast too, and new data centers are being constructed. All of this is adding additional pressure on water resources, creating pollution, and driving illegal mining, which in turn leads to human rights violations, the displacement of indigenous communities, and an increasing scarcity of freshwater.

Looking to the future

This report is for everyone, not just those directly involved in creating digital products and services. It advocates the need to understand the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, moving away from the capitalist logic of extraction. A circular economy is good, but it is at best just mitigating certain negative effects. We need an increased awareness of the entire life cycle of digitalization, plus clear actions and systematic tracking of its social and environmental footprint. As the IoT develops, defining what is and what is not a digital device is increasingly difficult. Although there are varying statistics related to C emissions and the impact of the digital sector, it is extremely important to understand that the digital economy is actually fuelling the wider global economy. As Pablo explains, we need to regain ”our critical thinking, breaking the magical digital thinking we are dealing with….[and ] understand that cyberspace has a growing footprint, [is] multi-dimensional, that …our digital environment has a consequence.

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Written by Jill TELLIER

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