Digital Disruptions for Sustainability (D^2S Agenda) Report

May 4, 2020

Reading time: 32 minutes

PREFACE

“If solutions within this system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself.” This is the message of Greta Thunberg and the youth activists around the world demanding climate action. It is simple and powerful. Yet few global efforts are dedicated to making it happen – to changing the systems that are inhibiting transformative climate actions.

Most climate mitigation strategies approach the climate crisis principally as a carbon management problem, focusing on reducing emissions by sector (e.g. energy, transport, or food). Sector-based emissions reduction work is critical, but it is not sufficient. This is because, while research indicates that deep decarbonization is technically possible, we have not yet figured out how to steer society onto a decarbonization path. More research and innovation on this issue are urgently needed.

In this report, the Digital Disruptions for Sustainability Agenda (D^2S Agenda), we explore this issue – how to steer society onto an inclusive deep decarbonization path. Our approach considers the climate crisis principally as a social challenge, where the formal and informal rules, power structures and dynamics, and mindsets embedded in our social systems are constraining climate actions. We explore the opportunities and challenges of leveraging the capabilities of the digital age to disrupt these rules, power structures, and mindsets and break the constraints to action.

The premise of this effort is that the digital revolution is already driving transformations in our underlying social systems at an unprecedented scale and pace. With a conscious and coordinated effort, we could steer these societal transformations toward the systems changes needed to unleash rapid, deep, and inclusive climate action.

The initial outlook for the digital revolution promised the democratization of information, the strengthening of governance through broader citizen engagement, a more equitable and greener sharing economy, and an improved ability to measure and manage previously intractable global environmental challenges. While some of these visions of positive systems change have emerged, many have not because we, as a society, failed to anticipate how the digital revolution would unfold. We did not foresee the scale of systems changes that would result from digitalization nor the new types of challenges posed by such large-scale changes. As a result, today we live in a digital age that threatens privacy, human dignity, social justice, the future of democracy, and environmental sustainability.

Tackling the climate crisis and working towards a just and equitable digital future are inherently interconnected agendas.

But it is not too late. The potential to leverage the digital age to benefit society and the planet is massive. And there is now a growing urgency to do so because society is interconnected through and dependent on both the natural and digital worlds – and our current trajectory poses global systemic risks emerging from both worlds. To seize the potential and minimize the risks, we must recognize that tackling the climate crisis and working towards a just and equitable digital future are inherently interconnected agendas. With this in mind, we must look ahead together – anticipate the systems changes that are unfolding as a result of the digital revolution, imagine the potential for new systems changes that could be realized from digitalization, and identify what actions we must take now to steer these powerful levers of change to help build the world we want.

The D^2S Agenda provides an initial framework for these ambitious tasks. It was developed with input from over 250 people around the globe. We are thankful to everyone who has engaged in this effort. We need to now expand the circle and deepen the collaborations so that together we can realize the potential of the digital age to drive systems changes toward a climate-safe and equitable world.

(Preface written by Amy Luers – Executive Director, Future Earth.)

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Goal

Net-zero emissions by 2050, while increasing equity and conserving nature

In 2015, world leaders adopted two international agreements – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change – that committed to pursuing widespread and rapid societal transformation to achieve a common goal of building a climate-safe future that is more sustainable, resilient, and prosperous for all. Digital disruptions are already driving societal transformations at a scale and pace unparalleled in history. It is unclear where these digital disruptions will lead; risks and uncertainties lie ahead. Yet opportunities exist for these disruptions to steer us towards a net- zero carbon emissions society.

In this report, we explore the opportunities and challenges of leveraging the digital age to disrupt the facets of existing economic, governance, and cognitive systems that are maintaining society on a carbon-intensive and increasingly inequitable path. We identify research and innovation opportunities and near-term actions needed to enable society to steer these disruptions towards a climate-safe and equitable world.

The Challenge

Sector-based strategies are not enough

Keeping global average temperature rise to well below two degrees Celsius will require cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in half by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 [1,2]. This will require completely decarbonizing our global society over the coming 30 years – the fastest energy transition in human history [3]. Yet GHG emissions continue to rise by ~2% per year [4].

Five sectors account for 80% of GHG emissions.

• Climate change is often approached as a technical carbon management problem.
• Most strategies focus on emission reduction “wedges” [5] or decarbonization pathways [6,7] by sector.
• Significant progress has been made in each of these sectors to reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency. But emissions are still going up. More rapid and widespread changes are needed.

The Constraint

Rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in existing social systems

While research shows that deep decarbonization pathways are technically feasible, rapidly steering society onto those pathways has proven to be a monumental task. This is because the rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in existing economic, governance, and cognitive systems constrain society from making the rapid transformations needed.

[Figure below: The gears inside the circle below represent the social systems cutting across all emitting sectors. The black chain that is connected to the centre of the gears represents that these social systems are constrained by the rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in them.]

We need to disrupt and change the systems constraining rapid, deep, and inclusive climate actions.

• Donella Meadows, the pioneering leader of systems change, highlighted the need to focus on “leverage points” – places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything [8].
• Meadows found that the biggest leverage points in social system centre around shifting the rules, power structures, and mindsets that define the functioning of the system.

The Opportunity

Digital disruptions for systems change

Our social, cultural, economic, and political interactions are increasingly mediated by machines, powered by our data and artificial intelligence (AI) [9]. This emerging reality is already influencing societal rules, power structures, and mindsets. Over the last year, Future Earth engaged more than 250 diverse experts from over 30 countries to develop this agenda on Digital Disruptions for Sustainability (D^2S Agenda), which explores how to leverage the digital age to drive systems change and enable societal transformations towards a climate-safe and equitable world.

We identified four digitally empowered capabilities that are already disrupting economic, governance, and cognitive systems at a global scale: unprecedented levels of transparency, intelligent systems, mass collaboration, and mixed reality.

Could these digital disruptors help steer global society towards a net-zero carbon future that is equitable and just?

We believe they could, but only if there is a conscious effort to navigate in that direction. If that effort is not made deliberately, we risk rapid, deleterious impact on the environment, the economy, and society at large.

The Risks

It is not clear where these digital disruptions will lead humanity

Without guidance, they may steer us down a path that threatens privacy, human dignity, social justice, the future of democracy, and environmental sustainability.

Our Strategy

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Our Approach

Collaborate to leverage the digital age to help drive societal transformations to a climate-safe and equitable world

The four digital disruptors identified in this report are already driving transformations in social and economic systems. It is unclear where these transformations will lead society. They pose many risks for humanity and the planet. One of the key risks is leaving behind a large portion of the global population who are not yet sufficiently engaged in shaping and benefitting from the digital age. But these digital disruptors may also hold the power to help society achieve a sustainable and equitable path to net-zero emissions. But this can only happen if researchers, tech innovators, policy and business leaders, civil society, and citizens collaborate together to consciously steer these digital disruptions to drive transformations to a sustainable, climate-safe, and equitable world.

The D^2S Agenda

Examples of questions that need to be answered, experiments that need to be done, and actions that need to be taken.

TO DISRUPT, STEER, AND SCALE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

RESEARCH

• How can we facilitate the embedding of democratically determined public values (e.g. keeping temperature rise well below two degrees) into digital platforms?
• Will an unprecedented increase in transparency of the social and environmental externalities of supply chains lead to transformative shifts in business practices and consumption norms?
• What are the social and environmental outcomes of existing digital nudging of consumers? Is digital nudging a powerful lever for shifting production and consumption behaviours and norms at a global scale?
• How can vulnerable populations leverage precision service capabilities to develop customized climate mitigation and adaptation solutions?

INNOVATION

• Develop analytic and legal systems and institutions that credibly use new data streams from satellite imagery, other sensors, and crowdsourcing to quantify and expose the cost of environmental and social externalities.

TO DISRUPT, STEER, AND SCALE GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS

RESEARCH

• How can trust and accountability be effectively created in a world where decisions are based on collective and artificial intelligence?
• Under what social and political conditions do the expansion of informational and anticipatory governance systems lead to inclusive sustainability outcomes? How can we leverage the digital age to enable and scale these and overcome constraints such as algorithmic bias and unequal quality and coverage of data?
• Under what conditions does Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) lead to inclusive sustainability outcomes? What technical, institutional, and political constraints must be addressed for MRV to be effective in different governance systems? How can these be enabled and scaled in the digital age?

INNOVATION

• Develop a new tool box for climate governance that leverages the four digital disruptors to better tap into the capacity and expertise of people across networks of states, businesses, local governments, and civil society.

TO DISRUPT, STEER, AND SCALE COGNITIVE SYSTEMS

RESEARCH

• Why do some concepts and narratives become embedded in societal discourse while others do not? How do they shape societal change? How has the emergence and reach of new concepts and narratives changed in the digital age and how does this vary with social and cultural context?
• How can we minimize and mitigate the risks of using digital technologies and platforms to manipulate cognitive biases and amplify specific worldviews? Can these mechanisms be used ethically to foster a new shared narrative centred on net-zero carbon emissions and global equity?
• What are the interconnections between changes in individual and collective mindsets, and how do these translate to collective action? How have these links shifted in the digital age? Do these provide an opportunity to steer and scale inclusive collective action on climate change?

INNOVATION

• Build a network of targeted engagement strategies that leverage mixed reality tools and intelligent systems to co-create new meta-narratives across populations and geographies.

CROSS-CUTTING ACTIONS (for enabling conditions)

• Establish a social contract for the digital age.
• Promote inclusion as a touchstone of the digital age.
• Expand open access to high-public-value data.
• Establish foundational standards for the digital sector.
• Expand public–private partnerships to build our digital future.
• Reduce environmental impacts of the digital age.
• Foster cross-sectoral collaboration and innovation.
• Invest in targeted communication, engagement, and education.

2. INTRODUCTION

Two powerful forces are shaping human destiny: global climate change and the digital revolution. Both are human creations that pose systemic risks to society. The changing climate is driving systemic shifts that threaten to destabilize the health and wellbeing of humankind. Big data, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming society in ways that pose systemic risks to the global social fabric. But fortunately, the digital age also presents systemic opportunities for driving the large-scale societal transformations needed to build a climate-safe and equitable world.

Society is increasingly interconnected through and dependant on both the natural and digital worlds.

Keeping global average temperature rise to well below two degrees Celsius will require cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in half by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050 [1]. In other words, we must completely decarbonize our global society over the coming 30 years. This challenge is often approached as a technical carbon management problem. Climate action strategies typically centre on emissions reduction opportunities, broken down by sector, “wedges” of activity [5], specific categories of actions [6], or pathways [7,10].

While research shows that deep decarbonization pathways are technically feasible, rapidly steering society on to those pathways has proven to be a monumental challenge. This is because the dominant formal and informal rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in our existing social and economic systems reinforce the current carbon- intensive and inequitable development path.

Investors and strategists working on the climate crisis are increasingly turning to digital innovations to improve efficiencies and reduce emissions from high-emitting sectors such as electricity, transport, food, land, and industry [11]. However, little attention to date has focused on how the digital age is driving transformations in underlying social systems that are keeping society on a carbon-intensive and vulnerable path and how these could be leveraged to disrupt the distribution of power, the norms, rules and mindsets that are keeping society on a carbon-intensive path. This is the focus of this report – the D^2S Agenda.

Driven by the digital revolution, society is experiencing massive disruptions that are leading to societal transformations at a scale and pace unparalleled in history. With over 4.1 billion people currently online [12], the digital revolution is reshaping almost every aspect of human lives. Machines, powered by our data, and artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly mediate our social, cultural, economic, and political interactions [9]. As a result, global society is increasingly interconnected through and dependant on both the natural and digital worlds.

The building of the D^2S Agenda

This report highlights opportunities and challenges for leveraging the digital revolution to drive systems changes by disrupting the systems currently maintaining our unsustainable development trajectory. The D^2S Agenda is not a roadmap for how technology can solve the climate crisis. Rather, it is an exploration of how we can leverage the digital age to disrupt the rules, power structures, and mindsets that are currently constraining climate action and steer society towards a climate-safe and equitable world.

The D^2S Agenda was developed over the course of a year through a combination of workshops, interviews, and desk-top research, as part of Future Earth’s Sustainability in the Digital Age initiative. With in-person and online dialogues, Future Earth engaged more than 250 diverse experts from over 30 countries to develop the Agenda.

The D^2S Agenda is an exploration of how we can leverage the digital age to disrupt the rules, power dynamics and structures, and mindsets that are currently constraining climate action and steer society towards a climate-safe and equitable world.

Initial framing of the D^2S Agenda was established through an online exercise conducted in the spring of 2019 with Futures CoLab, a collaboration between Future Earth and the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. This online exercise engaged approximately 150 subject- matter experts from around the world in facilitated discussions to explore the question “what are the systems sustaining society’s unsustainable – carbon-intensive and biosphere-degrading – lifestyles?” This resulted in the identification of digitally empowered systems changes that are already disrupting or that have the potential to disrupt the systems that are sustaining our unsustainability (see Appendix for details).

Another key contributor to this effort was a workshop on AI & Society held in Montreal, Canada, in September 2019, sponsored by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This workshop gathered 30 experts from academia, policy, the private sector, and civil society working in the areas of climate change, AI and digital technologies, and social change. The focus of this workshop was on the near-term actions needed to create the enabling conditions to leverage the digital age to unleash and steer societal transformations towards a sustainable, climate-safe, and equitable world.

These multiple lines of inquiry identified four digital disruptors – unprecedented transparency, mass collaboration, intelligent systems, and mixed reality – that are supporting the strengthening and scaling of key levers of systems change across three societal systems – economic, governance, and cognitive. For each lever, we explored the positive potentials, the risks, and what it would take to steer and scale in order to shed light on how to use the levers to drive positive, systemic changes. This resulted in the Research, Innovation, and Action Agenda, identifying key questions we need to answer, experiments we need to do, and actions we need to take in order to leverage digital disruptors to foster societal transformations to a climate-safe and equitable world.

Figure 1. Building the D^2S Agenda. The diagram above outlines the analysis process for developing the D^2S Agenda. Our research started by asking “what are the systems that are sustaining our unsustainabilty” through an international engagement process. Then we identified how the digital age was already, or had the potential to disrupt the systems constraints to climate action. We focused on four digital disruptors and explored how these four disruptors are already shifting the dominant economic, governance, and cognitive systems. We identified levers of systems change that have been developed by these digital capabilities. For each lever of systems change, we explored the potential transformative impacts, the risks, and what it would take to steer and scale. Finally, we identified key questions, innovations, and actions needed to enable the levers of systems change to drive positive, transformative change.

3. SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Achieving a sustainable future requires, as well articulated in the IPCC Special Report of 1.5°C global warming, rapid and unprecedented societal transformation. This transformation must be inclusive, involving far- reaching transitions in all sectors and fundamental behavioral change.

Dr. Youba Sokona – Vice-Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Senior Advisor for Sustainable Development, South Centre

What is meant by transformations

The increasing urgency and complexity of global sustainability challenges such as the changing climate, biodiversity loss, and water insecurity, has led to the emergence of the concept of transformation. It is used in contrast to words such as adjustment, adaptation, or transition which imply incremental changes. Societal transformations refers to fundamental changes in structural, functional, relational, and cognitive aspects of societal systems that lead to new patterns of interactions and outcomes [13]. Given the pace and magnitude of global environmental changes underway, there is a growing consensus that such fundamental changes – transformations – are needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals in the next decade [14–19]. The need for systems changes now runs deep across the globe. The 2020 Edelman Global Trust Barometer Report found only 18% of the global population surveyed say that the system is working for them – a 2% decrease in just one year since the 2019 report was released [20].

Societal transformations have happened before

History shows that rapid societal transformations are possible and not uncommon. The Industrial Revolution, women gaining the right to vote, the Green Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa – all of these societal transformations were spurred by disruptions resulting from a combination of technology, social movements, market signals, and/or government policy. In the past, rapid transformations have taken several decades. More recent societal transformations are measured in years not decades. For example, over just a few years, Microsoft and Apple brought computing to the masses, Google transformed how society accessed information, Facebook transformed how we connect with each other, and eBay and Amazon transformed how we do business.

Only 18% of the global population surveyed say that “the system is working for them.”

How transformations happen

Deliberate societal transformations are often initiated by small groups of committed individuals expressing values not shared by larger groups at a given point in time. These small groups often operate in informal networks that work both outside and within a dominant existing social system, to develop alternatives that disrupt and potentially replace the dominant regime if and when the right opportunity occurs [21,14,22].

Research on transformations is growing in multiple sectors, including energy [23], food [24,25], and urban systems [26,27]. Multiple perspectives have analysed how societal transformations could be conceptualized for sustainability [14,21,28], including socio-technical transitions [29], transformative pathways [30,31], focusing on equity and eliminating poverty [19,32], and personal to planetary actions [33,34]. The digital sector has been a transformative force changing business and governance models for key sustainability sectors such as energy, transport, land, and cities. While there is still limited research in this area and multiple risks to consider, the potential for the digital age to foster societal transformations for sustainability is huge [14,35,36].

However, in order to truly capitalize on the opportunity presented by the digital age, we must move beyond thinking of transformation exclusively in the physical sense – that is, building more efficient or less polluting infrastructure. Investments and policies in the physical structures are ‘shallower leverage points’ not having as big an influence on systems change [37]. More effective leverage points are those that focus on changing deeply embedded characteristics of how the system functions. These are defined by flows of information, the rules of the systems, and the mental models and power dynamics that control them [37]. These deep leverage points are more difficult to influence but the impacts are much greater. For example, a deep leverage point can be reached by accelerating transformations in the “personal sphere” by fostering change to “individual and collective beliefs, values, and worldviews” [28]. This could include changing the relationship between humans and nature, which many point to as a critical step in transitioning to a sustainable and equitable path [38].

Learning from history and experimenting with new approaches to drive rapid societal transformations for sustainability has become a global priority. In 2015, the nations of the world signed the 2030 Agenda and in doing so agreed “to take the bold and transformative steps … to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path” via the 17 Sustainable Development Goals [39].

How digital & tech innovators can help

The digital age has led to societal transformations at a scale and pace unprecedented in human history. While not all the changes have been positive, most have been rapid and widespread. Many started with a simple disruption to the status quo way of doing business, telling stories, or communicating with friends. Then, changes emerged from those disruptions and some began to grow exponentially. We must study how and why certain disruptions led to exponential changes while others did not. We must also quickly establish the institutional and technical conditions to be able to steer digital disruptions to support a low-carbon world. This will take experimentation, collaboration, and adjustments along the way.

The mindset of digital tech innovators is often to not just think outside the box, but to break the box and think exponentially. This is powerful. Yet, without a full systems perspective, this can lead to unintended detrimental consequences for the planet and society.

The digital sector and the digital innovator are critical to driving the societal transformations needed to achieve a world with net-zero emissions. But they cannot do it alone. Digital innovators, systems scientists, and policy and civil society need to come together to rethink global systemic opportunities and challenges and collectively build a path to global sustainability in the digital age. Each group brings their unique assets to the collaboration. Earth and social systems scientists understand the feedbacks and connections that define systems but are often constrained in their conceptualization of the potential for change. Policy and civil society leaders understand the cross-cutting lever within and outside of government that can drive change. Meanwhile, tech innovators are driven to reconceptualize and rebuild the world beyond perceived constraints (see Figure 2). This mindset of not just thinking outside the box but of breaking the box and thinking exponentially is powerful. But if not put into a full systems perspective this mindset can lead to solving problems not worth solving or worse – to unintended detrimental consequences for the planet and society.

Levers of systems change

To rapidly and fundamentally change a system, we must identify what systems scientists call “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (an economy, an ecosystem, a technology) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.

Over 20 years ago, Donella Meadows wrote a seminal article about Places to Intervene in a System, where she proposed a hierarchical list of possible leverage points for transformative systems change. This is represented in a simplified, adapted version in Figure 2.

Meadows established that the strongest leverage points for driving systems changes are altering the rules of the system, the power structures and dynamics that uphold them, and the mindsets that define them. Her work has shaped much of the research on societal transformations over the last decades. Yet, in practice, most climate strategies still focus on the realm of physical and institutional parameters and structures (the left-hand side of the spectrum in Figure 2). According to Meadows and other systems scientists [8, see also 37,38], these types of interventions have the lowest potential for driving deep systems changes. Information flows and control, with a slightly higher potential as a lever of systems change, refers to who has access to information, who controls flows, and how this influences feedback loops. In the time since Meadows’ work on this subject, the digital revolution has radically altered information flows and controls, which has driven massive systems changes throughout society. We now live in a new societal system, where the currency is data and attention, and human and social identities are increasingly defined more by the virtual than the physical world. This new societal system has opened up tremendous opportunities to move further to the right on Meadows’ classic figure (Figure 2) – and to start to push the most influential levers of changing rules, power structures, and mindsets.

By rules, we refer to both informal and formal rules, including informal social and cultural norms as well as formal incentives, punishments, and constraints. Power focuses in particular on the balance of power – who holds power and how it is distributed – and also references the structures underlying power balance. Mindsets are comprised of the value systems, worldviews, and beliefs which underly our opinions. These are often the most difficult to shift but, at a large enough scale, present the most powerful potential leverage point for transformational systems change.

In the new societal system created by the digital age, it is easier than ever before to push those big levers of rules, power structures, and mindsets. Indeed, they are already being pushed and driving even more extensive systems changes in society as a result of the digital age.

The digital revolution radically altered information flows and controls [a key lever], which drove massive systems changes throughout society in just a few years.

But many of these changes are intensifying unsustainable production and consumption systems, threatening democracy, and driving deep inequalities. The D^2S Agenda aims to identify opportunities to steer the forces pushing these powerful levers to shift rules, power structures, and mindsets towards a climate-safe and equitable world.

Figure 2. Levers of systems change. In 1999, Donella Meadows identified 12 leverage points to bring about change in a complex system [adapted from 8]. We have grouped these into three main categories: (1) physical and institutional parameters and structures; (2) information flows and controls; and (3) rules, power structures and dynamics, and mindsets.

4. DIGITAL DISRUPTIONS

The digital age has emerged as a result of widespread access to new information and technologies including big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and rapid advances in machine learning and AI. These digital technologies, in and of themselves, have no disruptive power. Power lies in the ability to combine these technologies to change how companies, governments, and civil societies create value, shape social norms, and communicate with, govern, and perceive the world. The digital age is also characterized by a continuous connectivity among people, driving systemic social–economic changes at a scale and pace unprecedented in human history.

Below we highlight four digital disruptors that have the potential to unleash societal transformations towards a climate-safe world. Yet without a concerted effort, these digital capabilities also hold the power to increase inequality, compromise democracy and privacy, and further degrade climate and the environment [42,43].

Satellites and other remote sensors, coupled with digitalization more broadly, are making information more open and accessible. Increasingly, transparency is becoming the norm and privacy is harder to find. Open digital surveillance platforms coupled with involuntary disclosure programmes are redesigning the meaning of transparency and accountability and creating new ways to shape, communicate, and govern sustainability [44].

The social web, the ubiquity of smartphones, and the emergence of decentralized digital ledgers are enabling people to connect and collaborate like never before. Massive collaboration enabled by digital technology has given rise to new forms of business around co-production and shared resources, new forms of social movements driven by online communities, and new forms of governance.

Machine learning and collective intelligence have created new forms of intelligent systems. Computers now have the capacity to gather and analyse data, perform complex activities, perceive and respond to the world around them, adapt based on experience, and communicate with other systems. Machines are also enabling new forms of human interaction. Machines and humans together are now solving bigger problems than either could address alone. Intelligent systems are revolutionizing a variety of sectors from energy to governance.

Technologies are increasingly enabling the merging of real and virtual worlds. This has created the opportunity to build immersive experiences superimposed on the real world, which have been shown to elicit emotional and behavioural responses distinct from traditional engagement methods.

The digital divide

Over half of the global population is online, with over 4.1 billion internet users in 2019 [12]. But access varies widely by region and population (see Figure 3). For example, Africa and Asia have a 28% and 48% internet penetration rate respectively, compared to Europe with a rate of 82.5% [12]. There is also a growing divide in internet access between urban and rural communities [45].

Two main drivers of the digital divide are the educational and economic disparities between countries [46]. The highest growth in internet users comes from mobile broadband access, which requires less investment in hardware as opposed to fixed broadband [47]. To ensure sustainability and equity in the digital age for all, it will be important to disseminate low-cost solutions to close this digital divide.

The economic impacts of the accelerating rate of technology uptake also varies by region. Projections indicate that the economies of some regions (e.g. North America or China) stand to gain more than others from the AI boom due to the rates of adoption and access and how different regions trade with each other through their supply chains [45]. Because the regulation of the digital world is not keeping pace with the changes, the digital divide may be poised to expand. As the commercialization of AI, blockchain, and derivative technologies rapidly expands, the disparity between those who benefit and those who do not will likely to grow unless, as a society, we can proactively tackle the divide as a global priority for sustainable and equitable growth.

Figure 3. Percentage of population connected to the internet by sub-region. Internet penetration rate ranges from 95% in parts of Europe and America to 12% in Central Africa. Darker circles indicate a higher rate of connection [52, compiled from multiple sources].

Digital technologies today have large carbon footprints

Progress is being made. Continuing to shift the digital sector to renewables is critical.

Artificial intelligence

AI has incredible potential for increasing efficiency. A recent report by PwC and Microsoft showed that strategically employing AI could lead to a 4% reduction in global GHG emissions by 2030 [45]. This can help to reduce GHG emissions [49] but can also improve many other factors related to human impact on the environment, including, for example, enhancing conservation efforts [50] and better management of water resources [51].

Given the great potential of AI, better understanding the climate impact of developing AI and training machine learning models is critical. One analysis found that training a single AI model can emit nearly five times as much carbon as the lifetime emissions of a single car [52]. Other studies, however, have cautioned that the assumptions underlying this finding are not representative of common practice, making generalizations to all AI and machine learning activities inaccurate [53]. Despite this divergence, there is agreement that more can and must be done to reduce the carbon footprint of AI and machine learning. This includes ensuring that cloud providers and data centres used in training models rely on renewable energy sources and enhancing transparency with regard to emissions [53,54]. The development of an openly accessible Machine Learning Emissions Calculator (https://mlco2.github.io/impact/) may help, as it will enable the AI and machine learning community to track emissions and share data and to include them with published code and papers.

AI could be a critical component of the digital game changers for climate through its potential to drive systems-level change. But to scale, it must be powered by renewable energy.

Bitcoin

Energy consumption estimates for bitcoin vary significantly, but comparisons are presented in the order of the annual energy use of whole nations (e.g. Jordan or Sri Lanka) [55] or almost twice that used by Google as a company (5.7 TWh) [56].

To track this, the University of Cambridge recently released the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Index, which is an online tool that provides real-time estimation of the energy requirements of the bitcoin network. Their estimates range between 21 and 146 TWh [57].

Bitcoin is built on blockchain, which is a distributed and immutable electronic ledger of every transaction that takes place in a network. Not all blockchains are created equal. Some blockchains, including bitcoin, employ proof of work protocols to secure transactions. Others are based on proof of stake – a less energy-intensive protocol for which great strides are being made to overcome trade-offs in terms of security. A wide variety of efforts are working to build climate-smart blockchain options. Shifting to renewable energy sources will eventually overcome many of these issues, but time is of the essence.

Systemic opportunities

In this report, we explore the potential of the four digital disruptors to disrupt the existing rules, power structures, and mindsets that are maintaining society’s carbon-intensive path and constraining climate action. We focus on the constraints embedded in three social systems: economic, governance, and cognitive. These three systems are represented below as gears that are driving society along the current high-emissions pathway. The premise of the D^2S Agenda is that the four digital disruptors are already disrupting the rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in each of these social systems, and driving societal transformations. An opportunity exists now to steer these transformations to build a climate-safe and equitable world.

Figure 4. Digital disruptors’ systemic potential. The outer circle represents the proximate sources of GHG emissions that are contributing to the high emissions pathway. The gears inside this circle represent the social systems cutting across all emitting sectors. The black chain that is connected to the centre of the gears represents that these social systems are constrained by the rules, power structures, and mindsets embedded in them. The premise of this report is that the digital disruptors are disrupting the rules, power structures, and mindsets, and open up the potential to steer us to a lower GHG emissions path – represented by the blue arrow.

Systemic risks

While the societal transformations resulting from the digital age create opportunities, they also pose a series of systemic risks related to both intentional and unintentional harm, as listed below. This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to be illustrative of challenges associated with the power of the digital age, providing context for the urgent need for research, innovation, and action. The risks highlight the need to focus research and innovation not only on the digital sector as a source of tools to increase efficiencies, but also as a force of systems changes.

1. If we continue on our current path, the digital age could accelerate and intensify resource- and emissions-intensive development and risk exceeding planetary boundaries [36,58].
2. Digital technologies can enable increasingly authoritarian actions by governments around the world, undermining the agency of citizens – for example, through rigid control of information [59,60].
3. Irresponsible use of digitally empowered decision-making and the increasing impact of social media and echo chambers leading to political polarization may erode democracy and deliberation [36], potentially contributing to the rise of digital dictatorship [60].
4. The global economy is increasingly dominated by digital companies that can at times circumvent government regulations and fair contributions to public funds [61,62].
5. Massive upheaval in current labour markets may occur as a result of increasing automation in the workforce, leading to loss of human dignity as opportunities for “meaningful work” are reduced [36,63].
6. Inequality at the global scale may worsen due to an inability to overcome digital divides or address information asymmetries, resulting in unequal access to and benefits from digital capabilities [36,58].
7. Many companies now derive value from data – oftentimes collected for free from citizens – leading to serious privacy concerns [58,64] and worries that this might intensify with the expansion of surveillance capitalism [65,66].
8. Advances in cyberspace – enabling communication across computer networks – have opened up a world of opportunities but have also led to incredibly complex systems difficult for human minds to comprehend. As a result, cybersecurity and safety present increasingly significant risks [67,68].
9. Without adequate and transparent integration of ethical and environmental considerations into their development, there is a risk that various applications of algorithms could perpetuate and intensify biases and lead to inequitable and environmentally detrimental outputs [69,70].

Cross-sector collaboration is needed to steer digital disruptors

Figure 5. Working together. It is unclear where the digital disruptors will lead society. Individually and together, they are driving widespread societal transformations. Through focused collaboration among researchers, tech innovators, policy and business leaders, civil society, and citizens, we believe we can steer them towards the climate-safe and equitable world we want.

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