Netz-Fest Cover
Since 08/2022 6 episodes

Netzfest EPISODE 02: Digitalisation and Sustainability with Prof. Dr. André Reichel

The OXFAM Podcast for Fair Digitalisation

2022-08-02 26 min Season 1 Episode 2 Oxfam Deutschland | Katrin Steglich and Landeszentrale f. pol. Bildung BW

Description & Show Notes

In this episode, we explore the question of how digitalisation can contribute to greater sustainability.

Transcript

AI Linda
00:00:00
Digital is now everywhere. The promises that it would make everything better have not been confirmed for everyone. In this podcast series, we explore the question of how digitalisation can contribute to a more livable world, e.g. by reducing inequality and strengthening equality, sustainability and civil society.
Kay
00:00:28
Welcome to the Oxfam Podcast dedicated to the topic of "fair digitalisation “ and which is produced in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg. My name is Kay and today I am talking to André Reichel. He is Professor of International Management and Sustainability at the International School of Management in Stuttgart. His research includes the business implications of a post-growth economy and the fusion of sustainability and digitalization. Thank you for taking the time for this interview!
André Reichel
00:01:05
I am pleased!
Kay
00:01:07
Our lives are becoming increasingly digital. Be it agriculture, which is set to become more efficient on a large scale by means of digitalization, or an App that makes agricultural machinery available for rent to farmers in Africa. Crypto coins are the digital counterpart to traditional currencies and exist only in databases. Our devices are all becoming smart and collecting data about us, Meta wants to map our analogue world in the digital - there has never been so much stored data and it is increasing all the time. Also, our efforts at deleting data are not convincing because it is a hassle, it is cheaper for many to just add another hard drive, and because - as we learned in the previous podcast - there is a lot of interest on the part of tech companies to keep our data in anonymized form. In terms of data protection law, you are then considered deleted, even if technical developments have already made this way of looking at things obsolete. André, just for the media necessary to store all our data, it takes raw materials, data centres, electricity, cooling. How do you assess the relationship between progress, efficiency and sustainability in this respect?
André Reichel
00:02:11
Thank you, Kay, for framing this so clearly. When it comes to digital transformation, we often hear that data is the oil of the digital age. But in fact, data is not the oil, but rather metals, especially precious metals and rare earths. In other words, everything that is built into these electronic products. And even a podcast like this, which seems virtual at first, has a substantial material as well as energetic foundation. And when we talk about digitalisation, this is often ignored or not sufficiently taken into account. So just because something is virtual, because you may not be able to touch it, does not mean that it is not also very physical and very real. The digital world is a very material world with incredibly large material and energy consumption, especially due to the use of algorithms. None of this comes out of nowhere. And in this respect, this digital transformation also needs very clear sustainability guidelines, with regard to the ecological framework conditions of this technical progress.
Kay
00:03:30
As I mentioned in the introduction, you are researching the fusion of sustainability and digitalization. What can digitalization contribute to reducing the resource consumption of our expansive economic system? Currently, digitization is more about increasing growth because that has been the narrative for our expansive economy. What are positive examples?
André Reichel
00:03:59
Of course technology can also be used for positive things when it comes to the topic of ecological consumption, i.e. optimisation of energy consumption, of supply chains, of logistics, of mobility. These are all examples where we can see that new digital technologies, software, algorithms and AI (artificial intelligence) can contribute to making the things we do more efficient in the end, and that is certainly a lever that digitalisation or digitalisation technology have. Another lever is that they can indeed replace physical activities, so the physicality doesn't disappear, but it can be reduced, as we have seen in the two years of the pandemic. With things like the zoom boom or other video conferencing systems, space suddenly becomes irrelevant to a certain extent and we no longer have to overcome it - which is also linked to completely new forms of organising work, working hours and places of work. I think this is a correct perspective. These digital technologies alone can do certain things. But if we embed them in a larger organisational, institutional framework of change, then perhaps they will also have very interesting, positive sustainability effects.
Kay
00:05:23
The rebound effect, namely the increase in consumption through the increase in efficiency, is well known. This also relates to digital consumption. What does it take to move towards a sustainable development of digital consumption?
André Reichel
00:05:48
So the rebound effect, which, as you have already correctly pointed out, accompanies every increase in efficiency. It does not always have to be negative. The rebound effect also makes it possible, for example, to consume more in situations where there are absolute shortages. In the case of digital consumption, we are certainly not talking about a situation of absolute scarcity, but rather that we have an abundance and can thus gain even more consumption options, and of course more consumption of nature goes hand in hand with this. You can't really get rid of the rebound effect. If you argue economically, the only option is efficiency. For progress made in efficiency, for example, through digital technology, this could be taxed with an efficiency tax - that's what Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker proposed.That means if you become four percent more efficient, then you have to add a tax increase of four percent, so that the efficiency gain is lost and consumption options cannot rise. Whether that is politically feasible, I don't know. Whether this tax could be as precise as required is also unclear. The other question is: does digital consumption enable us to consume in a different way, one that is perhaps - if we include the energetic material substructure that I mentioned - lighter on resources. We know that when we "consume" culture, art and such things, or also educational offers, that they are of course much lighter on resources than when you go on a long-distance trip to the Maldives. So the question here is, what other forms of consumption does digitalisation enable and could they also be easier on resources? And what should we do to promote precisely these types of consumer goods?
Kay
00:07:35
From this point of view, how do you assess the strategy of the big tech companies, with their advertising-based business models, to keep us online for as long as possible?
André Reichel
00:07:48
One of the founding fathers of ecological economics, Nikolaus Georgescu Rügen, a Romanian mathematician and economist, once proposed a ban on advertising in his "Bio-Economic Minimum Programme" because he said that we can do all kinds of things, but as long as there is advertising that encourages us to consume more and more, then all the technological solutions to environmental problems, e.g. circular economy, will be of no use because people will still consume more. Now I don't know whether a ban on advertising is needed. It is perhaps also interesting to consider again why advertising is such a dominant business model here. This means that you obviously can't earn money in any other way, if I may say so quite heretically: so there doesn't seem to be much that is real if it's not based on advertising. And that leads me back to the question of ownership, under certain circumstances, and specifically the question of ownership: "Who actually owns these platforms? That's what it's all about in the end. And I believe that if platforms like Facebook or Google or Amazon are now so dominant in our lives and we all do our daily business via these platforms, then they are actually part of the digital provision of public services. And as we know it in Germany, services of general interest are actually a public task or a task where the public sector regulates strongly and possibly - we have to think about this - how these platforms are either regulated much more strongly or who actually owns them.
Kay
00:09:28
So the question is - this narrative of more growth, which is strongly linked to advertising, does not fit with the CO² restrictions that we are ultimately imposing on ourselves in order to achieve the climate goals. What new paths can be taken? I think that's a good hint - if you could reduce advertising, or maybe even do without, and if the infrastructure were in the hands of the public sector, then perhaps we would also have different consumer behaviour, because it wouldn't be fuelled.
André Reichel
00:10:07
For sure. A few years ago, just for fun, I looked at Facebook and looked how many active users it had, what the advertising revenue was, that Facebook generated and then calculated that for 17 or 18 Euros a year, if we paid that, we would more or less completely replace Facebook's advertising revenue. And we wouldn't need it any more. In this respect, it is indeed the question and that is of course unpleasant, yes, but the question of ownership is up for discussion. And the other thing is that with these digital technologies and perhaps also with these platforms, through which we have a lot of access, whether we don't also need much stronger legal requirements requiring sustainability and ecological guidelines that must be fulfilled. So to believe so naively that technology will sort things out by itself, I don't think we can be that naive in the twenty-first century.
Kay
00:11:10
What are your idea here?
André Reichel
00:11:13
So, I think for energy consumption as well as efficiency - there could be clear guidelines. Imagine a sustainability reporting system for these platforms or mandatory disclosure of algorithms. Or, indeed, the consideration of the extent to which users should be involved in the platform's decisions in some appropriate way. So once again: if these platforms intervene so strongly in our lives and become part of our services of general interest, then it is no longer something that can only be organised privately, in my opinion.
Kay
00:11:57
How do you assess the effects on a fairer and more equal world if, for example, there were also a data donation for civil society interests on the part of these platforms, so perhaps also "AI as a service", i.e. artificial intelligence on a rental basis for civic science groups, because they don't act profit-oriented, but interest-oriented, which would be interesting for civil society as these data and these developments have always been made possible by citizens and taxes?
André Reichel
00:12:30
That is a good point - all these technologies have often been made possible by public funding. There are also movements like platform cooperativism, where people try to make their own platforms in the hands of citizens, i.e. they also take an activist approach here. The problem is, of course, that they have a hard time in a world of demand, where they have such big platform companies like Amazon or Facebook, Apple or Google, that they can hardly compare to. You have these network effects with digital technologies and in a digital economy. That means that if you participate in a platform, it increases your added value and the added value of the next person who also participates, and the more people participate, the more benefit the whole thing brings. It's true that this is a business where - if you like - the first one always wins. There is no such thing as a second Facebook or a second Google or a second Amazon, these are always markets, these digital markets, where we have monopolies. And when monopolies are formed, well, who can take action against them? It's the state. And we also see - and I would like to add, thank God - that the European Union is acting very strongly in this area. Most recently with the Digital Service Act.
Kay
00:13:58
One aspect we have not yet talked about is the distribution of opportunities and possibilities on a global level. On the one hand, there are precisely the countries in which resources for the production of digital infrastructure are mined in precarious labour conditions. And on the other hand, there are a few monopolists with their scaling digital business models that have created unprecedented monetary power. And these contrasts are, I think, becoming more and more pronounced. Can good ecological decisions be made at all on the basis of economic weakness in large parts of this world?
André Reichel
00:14:34
That's a very good question, of course. But I think it is possible. You can sometimes despair a little when you look at the last 30 years of climate conferences. But we must not forget that major breakthroughs have been achieved time and again. A major breakthrough was, for example, the Paris Climate Agreement, which is now also having an extreme effect. It is not only an agreement that now obliges states, but last year, with the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, it actually also concretised the German Constitutional Law with the protection of the natural foundations of life. So I really believe that we must not underestimate the political dimension, including the global political dimension. A lot is happening, a lot has happened. And I am actually quite confident that more will happen, also because the pressure to act is increasing. And if we look at the last few years and the last few weeks, of course a lot is changing. But we have also seen that politics in particular has re-established its primacy. We no longer live in neo-liberal times, where the market determines everything, but politics is back. The state is back. And in this respect, I think that there is a chance that global action can be taken here as well.
Kay
00:16:06
One topic I would like to address is the innovation methodology we are currently pursuing, which is that competition stimulates the market. That means that there are always a lot of providers fighting for the supremacy of their product. In the end, one remains, maybe two, and the others have been taken over or displaced. Do we perhaps also need a new political framework in innovation methodology in order to proceed in a more resource-conserving way? With a view to the advantages and disadvantages of society as a whole?
André Reichel
00:16:40
Let's put it this way: in the non-digital economy, there are always more than one company. It is a very specific characteristic of the digital economy that we have these tendencies towards monopolisation, which is not the case otherwise - let's say in car manufacturing or in other industries. There are always waves of concentration, that's true. But there are always waves of diversification also, but not in the digital economy. And that is why it is so fundamentally different from other industries we have. I think we need to think more about this: How do we ultimately deal with such characteristics? And how do we deal with such monopolies? I believe that the question "competition stimulates business" is not fundamentally wrong. But I believe that a competition supervisory authority must also abandon its naivety. Because it has been shown - especially in digital markets - that no matter how hard you try to keep these markets open, when a monopoly position is formed, there is virtually no way to break it up, because then, in case of doubt, this dominant company simply buys up or pulls in all the newcomers that come onto the market. And that is indeed a fundamentally different characteristic of these digital markets, this digital economy that we have.
Kay
00:18:06
You are also researching the post-growth economy. What is the vision of the post-growth economy and how does it contributes to more sustainability and what framework would ultimately have to be set up for it?
André Reichel
00:18:23
So Post-Growth Economy - in French: de croissance - is the battle cry, which Serge Latouche wrote down in an essay almost 20 years ago. The idea behind it was to say: We have to shake up and frighten these political-economic discussions because we obviously can no longer talk and think beyond the ideas of growth. We are so focussed on economic growth as a normal state of affairs, and no solutions to problems are thinkable or sayable outside of economic growth, that's when this concept of "de croissance" or the post-growth economy came as a wake-up call. In other words, a provocation. To say "Wait a minute, isn't a completely different kind of economy thinkable? The vision behind it is indeed that it is an economy and also a society that operates beyond growth, where contraction processes are also thinkable and sayable, where we actually bring about intentional and planned contractions of the economy, for example in those areas that are not sustainable, that create great injustices. And that, of course, continues to be a provocation, because we like to solve problems not by doing away with the undesirable things, but by just throwing so many new things on top of them until we don't see them anymore. And that's what I find interesting about post-growth economics and this whole discourse, that it says "We also have to talk about shrinkage, talk about contraction and ask ourselves again fundamentally, what is the purpose of economy?" The purpose of economy is to ensure a just, liveable society for everyone and that everyone can participate. By the way, this "everyone" includes non-humans too, who are a large part of our world, so in this respect - it is actually a completely different idea of what economy and society look like.
Kay
00:20:36
Is there a good example in this respect referring to digitalisation? Ultimately, this would need to refer to behavioural change. E.g. sharing offers, so that people no longer need to buy everything, but perhaps could also exchange or share. What ideas are being discussed in this respect?
André Reichel
00:20:59
You always have to beware not to immediately look at the digital solution and completely forget what the problem is that you want to solve with it. Certainly, digital solutions can help to scale things. When I think of the "for free shops" that have existed for many decades or other things like exchange circles which are usually linked to regional currencies, all these things can be scaled up by means of digital technologies, i.e. they can become bigger and more secure. And it is quite possible that we could use digital technologies for this, for regional currencies, for exchange circles, where direct exchange of services takes place between citizens, beyond the market. I find that quite interesting. Are there possibilities for us to use platform technologies and other things to shape such non-market or more than just market exchange relationships, which are always also social interaction relationships? Because I am really convinced that we also need systems that are not strictly commercialised, where people can meet directly and also directly exchange services, ideas and offers.
Kay
00:22:19
Would you say that successful digitalisation leads to more sustainability, more justice in the sense of resource distribution, perhaps also on a global scale?
André Reichel
00:22:30
I am convinced of that. And I believe it is also absolutely necessary. Sometimes, especially when we are discussing the topic of social justice - and sometimes the question of ecology and the question of social justice are often set against each other - but for me it is clear that in the twenty-first century the ecological question is the social question - fair access to natural resources, to an intact environment, that is actually a very central debate that we have to have. The last IPCC report named colonialism as one of the main causes of climate change. And there you can also see that these social injustices that we have, have ecological effects and vice versa. In this respect, thinking ecology and social issues together is very central here. It is not a contradiction, and I always resist when people try to construct a contradiction.
Kay
00:23:32
To conclude, what three tips habe you got for us with regard to justice, sustainability and digitalisation? What belongs on our agenda, as political actors, but also as private individuals?
André Reichel
00:23:45
The first point, or tip whatever you want to call it, is: we should not see ourselves as consumers, but as active citizens in a democratic community. It was the greatest trick of neoliberalism that we all thought there was sustainable consumption, and that it's your choice what you buy. It's not about that. It's really about us being parts of this democratic community and actively participating in it. So that would be the first point: not seeing ourselves as consumers, but as citizens. The second point, and I have already mentioned this, even though we - and I think many of you listening to this podcast now - are also interested in and perhaps also enthusiastic about digital technologies: Question technological solutions! Often technologies are solutions in search of problems. And in the process they create new problems. So really critically say "Why do I actually need this?" And don't think from the outset that it will be a great thing - remain critical. And I think that when it comes to digital, it's very important to follow Peter Lustig's motto: Switch off your devices. The world is not a screen, the world is so much more than that. So it's also important to escape the digital, even if the digital can offer great opportunities for inclusion. But let's not forget that there is still a material, physical world that is also part of our human life.
Kay
00:25:13
Thank you for the interview!
André Reichel
00:25:15
Thank you!

Give us Feedback

Whether you'd like to give us general feedback on our Podcast or discuss a certain episode, this is the place to go. Just enter your message and select the specific episode. Thanks so much for reaching out to us!

By clicking on "Send message", you agree that we are allowed to process your contact information for the sole purpose of responding to your inquiry. The form processing is handled by our Podcast Hoster LetsCast.fm. You can find more information on their Privacy page.

2024 - Oxfam Deutschland | Katrin Steglich

Hosted by LetsCast.fm
Create your own podcast