Lisbon – 19 September 2024
At the annual IFIP General Assembly (GA), the Climate Change & Digital Technology Taskforce presented its first report on Sustainability. In it, many experts from IFIP’s large scientific ecosystem have taken positions on a number of issues and provided advice – a good basis for conversation in a process that is certainly not yet finished.
The presentation was made with reports of the forest fires in Portugal in the background. We see every nature event in the media being linked to climate change. Scientific research shows that the number of fires is increasing, and that trend seems to mirror changes in sea levels and average temperatures. Interestingly, the local media actually indicate that due to the lack of nature management and human intervention in land management – and thus disruption of ecological structures – there is more dead wood, with fire danger as a higher risk.
Other media images are also shocking: we read about the great natural damage of wind turbines (both cradle-to-cradle and on the local environment). We know about the massive logging in North America, South America and in West Papua, respectively to fire power plants in Europe and to plant monocultures.
We know that the hundreds of oil platforms in the North Sea dump their wastewater there too. We look away as lumps of plastic clothing wash up on the shores of Africa. And we order another burger with many man-made artificial ingredients. All made possible and supported by helpful IT people. At the same time, IT professionals are racking their brains about how they can contribute to a better world.
AI applications and data centres are eating up our energy faster than we can produce it, while in turn we need this computing power to innovate and create software to help drive this new technology. This challenge is only going to get worse.
At the same time, we see that if we work together from the profession in an international context, we can accelerate at points. We invest in Green IT, we support innovation and help to find other alternatives to produce electricity. IT is used to monitor fire hazards in Portugal, allowing emergency services to act faster. Other countries can learn a huge amount from this – Australia, for example – as we conclude in Lisbon. Through IFIP networks, IT practitioners can thus share best practice.
Scientists and experts in the IT profession can make their contributions in four areas. First, it is essential to help unlock information so that it is clear in what ways politics, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, Big Oil, Big Food and Big Tech (!) contribute to a better world for our children.
In addition, we can support knowledge sharing. In all areas, we see a shortage of knowledge and lack of human capacity to continue working on all tasks in public and private organisations. Knowledge sharing can help mitigate these shortages. More knowledge also leads to higher productivity. This also includes a third contribution: make that knowledge public as much as possible, so that professionals are able to keep learning.
And finally: act ethically. Dear IT Professional: Know what you are doing and what responsibility you have when you use, create or write code for your IT system. Together with the client and the user, you are responsible for the quality and review of your facilities and their deployment. And that is a big task on the shoulders of every professional.
Fortunately, there are national and international professional organisations that can support you in this. Long live our ecosystem.
By Wouter Bronsgeest
