The European Green Deal is a set of political initiatives aimed at achieving climate neutrality for the European Union by 2050. However, the challenges of achieving both the ecological and digital transition are at the forefront of the European Commission’s priorities, raising the question: are they compatible? A new study by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) warns of the risks of addressing both transformations together, as environmental challenges could take a back seat to digital innovation.
The study argues that the EU is using this dual transition to gain a “competitive advantage in the digital market”, prioritizing environmental governance only in terms of digital sector sustainability. According to Zora Kovacic, Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Studies in Economy and Business and the Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA Lab) of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) at UOC, and lead author of the research article on this topic.
The neglect of the most pressing environmental challenges
The research, based on a comprehensive analysis of high-level EU policy documents, shows how the linking of ecological and digital transitions “turns environmental problems into business opportunities” that can be exploited by digital technologies (such as AI, big data, and blockchain), creating new markets while prioritizing environmental governance for the digital sector, thus distancing it “from environmental issues and promoting the sustainability of the new digital sector”, the authors note in the article.
As Kovacic explains, this is a clear case of lamp posting, focusing more on problems that can be solved rather than those that require urgent solutions. “Important environmental challenges such as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, changes in geochemical cycles, and water depletion and pollution, to name just a few, are being sidelined as a result of the dual transition because they are not digital challenges. Instead, priority is being given to problems that can be solved with digital technologies,” the researcher states.
An unlikely coalition
In view of this, the researchers believe that promises of solutions that are both ecological and digital form an “unlikely coalition”, as they are based on different logics. “The ecological transition is driven by a logic of limits whereby there are certain things that ‘cannot be done’. For example, we cannot pollute to the extent of disrupting ecosystems. The digital transition, on the other hand, is driven by a logic of unlimited possibilities where any problem can be solved if human ingenuity permits it. It is unlikely that these two logics (the ‘cannot do’ and the ‘can do’) can work simultaneously. They may even become contradictory,” Kovacic asserts.
In fact, the research article led by UOC shows how the European Commission itself acknowledges the existing tension between the two transitions in documents such as the Strategic Foresight Report 2022 or the warning from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), a Directorate-General of the European Commission responsible for providing scientific and technical advice, which points out that the digital and green transitions “can reinforce each other, but can also clash”.
According to the research team, the dual transition is thus a discursive resource used by the European Commission to create synergies and consensus on difficult-to-govern and often controversial policy issues. “As a result, policies are no longer built on evidence, but on the desire to provide solutions,” Kovacic states.
A way to finance local projects
The study also analyzes national recovery and resilience plans funded by the NextGenerationEU plan. The results show that EU funding focuses on plans previously established by member states. “Countries seem to strategically use the dual transition label as a means to finance specific local projects, either by combining ecological measures with local needs (such as energy efficiency linked to post-earthquake reconstruction) or by presenting local projects as part of the ecological transition (such as the expansion of metro and train lines),” the authors affirm.
Despite this funding strategy, the researchers believe that, beyond being a case of “greenwashing”, “the discourse of the dual transition is based on the simple belief that everyone wins, relying on a digital imaginary that fails to deliver the promised solutions”.
A more participatory and integrative alternative approach
The research team proposes an alternative policy approach to address this issue: “avoid technocratic solutions, which inevitably involve concessions, and focus more on democratic resolutions as a means of addressing those concessions in a participatory and integrative way”. The authors cite actions such as the recognition of the Mar Menor as a legal person as an example. “It was a grassroots initiative, driven by activists and academics, and is a great example of how a participatory process leads to a very broad concept of inclusive policies: the inclusion of nature itself (in this case, the Mar Menor lagoon) in the fight for environmental conservation,” the researcher points out.
In this scientific work, published in the journal Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Zora Kovacic collaborated with TURBA Lab researchers Cristina García Casañas, Lucía Argüelles, and Paloma Yáñez Serrano; professors Ramon Ribera and Hug March; and Louisa Prause from Stellenbosch University (South Africa).
First phase of the DEMO project
This is the first work published as part of DEMO, a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation dedicated to the study of the “digital turn” in environmental governance, where environmental challenges are seen as technical challenges, ignoring the non-technological aspects of these challenges. The next phases of the research will include an analysis of “how ecological and digital issues are being coupled, and the consequences of this, through four case studies on the energy and agri-food sectors in Spain,” the researcher notes.
via: MiMub in Spanish
