Submitted by Ronnie Hall on
(New York, 20 September 2024) The looming environmental dangers of massive deployment of digitalization and unleashing AI are being effectively ignored by the UN Summit of the Future taking place in New York on 22-23 September 2024 [1]. Giant technology companies are using the summit to position themselves as the tech saviours who will solve the world crises, with final versions of the text concealing the stark impact of their activities on the planet’s environment.
Even if it pretends to be anchoring a digital future in human rights, the Global Digital Compact text being negotiated at the Summit is now devoid of any effective reference to the environmental dangers of rampant digitalization. The message from the ETC Group team joining civil society events in New York and elsewhere is that the world cannot ignore that there’s no such thing as a free lunch in terms of our digital future!
As ETC Group’s recently published research shows [2], the pervasive use of digital devices in all sectors of life already has a huge impact on nature and human communities. All of our digital activity is stored in data centers, misleadingly called “clouds” which require a staggering amount of water supply and fossil fuel. For example, data shows that by 2027, the water removed from ground sources to power data centers is expected to reach between 4.2bn and 6.6bn cubic meters, or about half the amount consumed by the UK each year.
In addition, digitalization assumes the expansion of the extractive sector. Pure grade silicon is used to produce semiconductor chips, and critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are needed to manufacture batteries that power electronics and digital tools. The manufacturing units for these chips and batteries are built on large tracts of land and their workers have been documented as having been exposed to harmful chemicals.
The proliferation of digital technologies is also generating vast mounds of e-waste, a large quantity of which is exported to the Global South where chemicals like mercury and flame retardants are released into the environment and impact the health of exposed workers and communities.
Yet this recognition is almost completely absent from the current Global Digital Compact text which is part of the UN Summit of the Future; and even where there have been brief references to the environmental costs of digitalization they have been progressively removed from the text or watered down with each revision since the Zero Draft.
For ETC Group, the UN’s Global Digital Compact cannot be allowed to be a vehicle for corporate capture of the UN. If negotiators are serious about promoting ‘a better tomorrow’, global leaders should not only guarantee access to technologies to all, but also raise the question of who is controlling those technologies and what for.
Notes:
[1] On September 22-23, world leaders will convene at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the Summit of the Future to adopt the Pact for the Future, which will include a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations.
[2] For more information about the environmental and social risks associated with digitalization, read ETC Group research paper : Behind Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. For a discussion on technology and society, read The Politics of Technology