Decoupling IT? A Global Comparative Ethnography of the Role of IT in the Mitigation of the Climate Crisis

Project Information

DecouplingIT

Grant agreement ID: 101045473

DOI

10.3030/101045473

EC signature date 25 May 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 October 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 266,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 266,00

Coordinated by

IT-UNIVERSITETET I KOBENHAVN
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DecouplingIT (Decoupling IT? A Global Comparative Ethnography of the Role of IT in the Mitigation of the Climate Crisis)

Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Climate change is one of the biggest existential issues of our time, and there is little global agreement on how to deal with it. Governments and private sector industries argue that ‘decoupling’ economic growth from carbon emissions is the best way to reduce climate impact while still maintaining a healthy economy. Yet, how to do so remains an unsolved question. Most proponents of decoupling see IT as playing a central role, whereas critics argue that IT itself is entangled with incessant capitalist growth and has a large and often unacknowledged climate impact. In addition, IT solutions frequently have the side-effect of creating new and unforeseen problems – social or climatic. The challenge of decoupling is thus broader than the management of the relationship between the economy and the climate. As much as decoupling is about how we imagine the climate crisis can be solved with technologies, trusting that they can create the changes we need, it is also about the cultural value of lifestyles that we do not want to change.

The DecouplingIT Project thus approaches decoupling as a matter of how sociocultural change is generated in the spaces between IT, climate change and capitalism. We study these spaces through ethnographic explorations in five studies of how IT professionals and enterprises articulate climate change as a problem in demand of IT-generated change, and in particular how they practically deploy IT with the climate in mind.

While both climate change and IT are manifested in globally diverse ways, their interrelationship must be studied comparatively with attention to how particular conditions in different locations give rise to disparate responses. Consequently, we conduct research in distinct but conceptually connected ‘climate-IT-hubs’ each facing climate change in their own ways. This addresses a major theoretical gap in qualitative social science research, namely how global change is driven through the intersecting roles of IT, climate change and capitalism.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first two years of the project have been focused on commencing and progressing with ethnographic fieldwork for the different subprojects (studies).

Study 1 headed by a postdoc has completed fieldwork in Bangladesh over several stays including one fieldtrip by the postdoc and the PI together to enhance integration into the overall project. The research has touched upon digitalisation and sustainability in the urban setting of Dhaka, where digitalisation is rapidly evolving but rarely related to sustainability efforts, and - as a contrast - in the rural ‘char island’ areas, where dwellers have low tech adoption and few prospects of government assistance, which makes their adaptions to climate change a challenge. Several articles stemming from this study are currently in the making and some have been presented in draft form at conferences.

Studies 3, 4 and 5 are ongoing and conducted by PhD students, who are by now half way through the ethnographic phases under guidance by the senior faculty of the project. All of them have presented initial results at relevant conferences. Study 3 has as planned approached a nuanced understanding of ESG governance and policy implementation in China from which the PhD student aims to address a gap in social science research on the role of data and civil society (NGOs) in governance of sustainable development. Study 4 has focused on the energy extraction of Icelandic landscapes in relation to the huge growth in computational demands for electricity in a local data center industry, which altogether has given rise to discussions of (digital) sustainability. The fieldsite for study 5 is South Africa which faces problems of water scarcity for agricultural growing and a strong tech sector engaged in optimising sustainability through innovation. The research has so far uncovered the complexity of conflicting sustainability concerns in the fresh fruit industry involving labour rights, growth optimisations, and restrictions put in place by connections to global markets.

Study 2 (Brazil) has been delayed due to its pilot study (a project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark) proving more challenging than originally anticipated. This has still led to a conceptual article (see results) and given inspiration to novel methodological work. Study 2, in moving beyond the pilot, will come to examine a diversity of innovation strategies related to 4.0 technologies and decoupling. Many initiatives highlight high-tech approaches, using advanced technologies to enhance local products and attract funding, but for example community-driven or NGO-led models rely on appropriate technologies and traditional knowledge.

In terms of overall conceptual work, the senior researchers are integrating the thoughts emerging from the empirical studies into more general conclusions on the role of digital technologies in relation to climate change. Some of this is already published or has been presented at relevant conference venues. The PhD students have been guided in developing connections between their own empirical explorations and had a panel proposal on ‘sustainability claims’ accepted for a major conference. The PI has furthermore spent time with Danish stakeholders involved in discussions of ‘twin transition’ (a term flagged in EU’s Green New Deal) and similar initiatives aimed at integrating digitalisation and green transitions in order to ground the conceptual development in societal debates at both an EU and a national Danish level.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project’s general conceptual work is contributing to social science discussions of the how digital technologies and technoscience more generally relate to the contemporary crises of climate and environment. It has resulted in a contribution to a co-edited special issue of the journal NatureCulture (vol 6, issue 1) with the focus on ‘Digital Anthropocene’, which addresses how it has become increasingly difficult to engage with environmental or climatic questions without considering how they intersect with the digital. Likewise the grant has contributed to the article ‘Salvage Technoscience’ in Environment and Planning F. The article conceptually prepares the specific research of Study 2 by critically addressing the idea that technoscience should play a decoupling role and salvage (conserve) nature from exploitation through extractive capitalism.

These two contributions could both become significant achievements in relation to state-of-the-art in the fields in question, but it remains to be seen how they will be received by peers in the respective academic communities. The special issue was the result of a long-term interest in the topic. It has thus wrapped up and consolidated a broader understanding of the role of data and digital technologies in the contemporary. The article in Environment and Planning F is conversely the starting point for an exploration of the ideological promotion of technology and technoscience as inherently ‘salvaging’ what is lost as a result of capitalist expansion. We expect this discussion to be opened up further throughout the project period and beyond.