Sustainability in the digital age: Intended and unintended consequences of digital technologies for sustainable development
探讨数字化对可持续发展的双重影响,既可能创造可持续价值,也可能加速消费、不平等和生态破坏,适合关注数字技术与可持续发展关系的政策制定者和学者。
Digitalization and sustainability are currently "hot" topics for policymakers and practitioners. Scholars working on their interaction have been cautious in their optimism, though. Not all digitalization contributes to the creation of sustainable value. Some forms of digitalization accelerate consumption and inequalities and exacerbate growth patterns that further breach the planetary boundaries. The German Advisory Council on Global Change, for example, warns of the dangers in its report Towards Our Common Digital Future (WBGU, 2019), while the Club of Rome (2019) recommended in an open letter to the EU President that we need to ensure that exponential technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and digitalization are optimized for people, planet, and prosperity through the delivery of a low-carbon, sustainable, socially just, well-being-oriented circular society.