Digital Disruptions for Sustainability (D^2S Agenda)

The Digital Disruptions for Sustainability Research Agenda (D^2S Agenda) explores 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 the digital disruptions already underway to drive transformations to a sustainable, climate-safe and equitable world.

Tackling the climate crisis and working towards a just and equitable digital future are inherently interconnected agendas that require collaborative effort. The D^2S Agenda was developed with input from over 250 people around the globe.

Key Insights

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.

The D^2S Agenda identifies four digital disruptors that 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. They 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.

In the D^2S Agenda we propose examples of questions, experiments, and actions to disrupt, steer and scale economic systems, governance systems and cognitive systems towards an inclusive digital future.

Online coverage: The D^2S received coverage in 55 different media outlets, 19 countries, and 7
languages.

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