Information and communication technology's role in environmental sustainability

¶ … sky may not be actually falling, but environmentalists are sounding the clarion call that the earth is in big trouble and action needs to be taken now to avoid potentially disastrous consequences in the future. In fact, global warming, air and water pollution as well as a host of toxic emission are threatening the environment in ways that demand effective alternatives to business as usual. Fortunately, there is a wide range of information and communication technology tools are available to help implement and administer environmentally sustainable programs that can help address these issues. In addition, these information and communication technology tools can help improve the effectiveness of existing programs in ways that have not been possible in the past. To accomplish these goals, though, requires a thoughtful and careful analysis of how to use these information and communication technology tools appropriately, which is the focus of this study. The purpose of this study was to assess how information and communications technologies have been used in the past to promote environmentally sustainable solutions, and to identify obstacles, challenges and constraints that have affected these initiatives. A final purpose of the study was to determine how information and communications technology has been used to accomplish these goals. To achieve these research goals, this study reviewed the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning environmental sustainability and how information and communications technology can be used to make these efforts more effective and efficient. A summary of the research and important findings that emerged are presented in the study's conclusion.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction

Statement of the Problem

Purpose of the Study

Importance of the Study

Chapter Two: Review of the Relevant Literature

Overview of Environmental Sustainability

Applying ICT to Environmentally Sustainable Initiatives

The Environmental Impact of ICT

Chapter Three: Summary and Conclusion

Effect of Information and Communication Technologies on Environmental Sustainability

Chapter One: Introduction

Environmental sustainability has become a focus of individuals, organizations, and government agencies across the globe. Because information and communications technology (ICT) has quickly become a major factor in the working and personal lives of the majority of people worldwide, it is logical to conclude that ICT can play a major role in furthering environmentally sustainable conservation efforts. Unfortunately, the production, use and disposal of technology equipment, what has been termed "e-waste," also have a profound environmental impact that must be taken into account in developing informed solutions to the world's environments problems. Fortunately, the increasing awareness of the impact humans have on the Earth and its resources has created a worldwide movement toward environmental sustainability. With the prevalence of technology, it is understandable that green it and green computing practices are being actively researched, a trend that also represents the purpose of this study which is discussed further below.

Statement of the Problem

Given recent trends in the explosive growth of ICT, it is important to identify ways these technologies can be used to good effect to promote environmentally sustainable initiatives that are desperately needed during an era where global warming, toxic emissions and a rapidly growing global populations are major concerns.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to determine what has been accomplished in recent years with regards to the use of ICT to promote environmentally sustainable solutions, as well as what obstacles, challenges and constraints have been involved in these initiatives, and how ICT has been used to achieve these goals. To this end, this study reviews the juried and scholarly literature, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Importance of the Study

There are a number of important reasons to investigate the role of information and communications technology in promoting environmentally sustainable solutions. For instance, according to Fichter (2002), "Until now, positive environmental consequences of [ICT] have generally been coincidental" (p. 25). Furthermore, the federal government has mandated that government agencies identify effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (FedCenter.gov), an initiative that is highly amenable to the use of ICT. Moreover, there are software companies that provide the environmental sustainability software for the government entities and private organizations which helps to lower energy costs and generate higher savings from carbon reduction projects, as well help to easily execute the federal mandate. In spite of these positive trends, there remains some debate concerning the degree to which ICT can promote environmental sustainability with the research to date suggesting that there some significant negative aspects involved that require further investigation (Erdmann, Hilty, Goodman and Arnfalk, 2004), a need that this study sought to address.

Chapter Two: Review of the Relevant Literature

Overview of Environmental Sustainability

In order to identify viable methods of using information and communications technology to promote environmentally sustainable solutions, it is important to determine what environmentally sustainability means. In this regard, Vucetich and Nelson (2010) advise, "Progress in understanding and achieving sustainability requires addressing it as both a scientific and an ethical issue" (p. 538). Indeed, something can be "sustainable," particularly in the short-term, without being responsible to the long-term needs of humankind. According to Vucetich and Nelson, though, many definitions of environmentally sustainable are charged with nebulosity, making a precise understanding difficult. For instance, some definitions of sustainability involve concepts such as the ability to provide humans what they need to live in a meaningful way without significantly degrading the environment, but such definitions introduce several additional areas that demand definition. It is reasonable to suggest that beyond the basic Maslow-type need such as food, water, air, clothing and shelter, an entire constellation of needs exists depending on the context in which people live. Depending on the context and definitions of sustainability, then, exploiting the environment to provide humans what they actually need to live today will ultimately involve either ensuring or degrading the ability of future generations to attain what they need to enjoy meaningful lives (Vucetich & Nelson, 2010).

The key word involved is "exploit," suggesting that truly environmental sustainability must avoid exploitation in favor of responsible use. While this may appear to be a fine line (and it is), Keong (2005) notes that there are two dimensions of environmental sustainability that play a role in whether something is "used" or "exploited." The first dimension of environmental sustainability is ecological sustainability and the second is environmental quality. "Ecological sustainability," Keong notes, "relates specifically to the resilience of an ecosystem. Resilience is defined as the ability of an ecosystem to absorb or adapt to shocks and stresses when disturbed and to reconfigure itself without significant decline in its crucial functions in relation to the social and ecological systems" (p. 124). Resiliency, then, is a measure of the "integrity" or "healthiness" of a given ecosystem (Keong, 2005). In what Keong describes as an emerging "techno-economic paradigm," ICT is playing an increasingly vital role as a means of facilitating a wide range of activities that have a bearing on the environment. According to Keong, "The techno-economic paradigm is a combination of interrelated product and process, technical, organizational, managerial, and institutional innovations that provoke transformations in a much wider range of industries, services, and the economy as a whole" (2005, p. 124). In this context, this emerging framework stands to introduce ICT-based innovations that can facilitate business transactions, reduce the carbon footprints of business activities and monitor these effects in ways that have not been possible in the past (Keong, 2005).

Information and Communications Technology

The past 50 years or so have witnessed the introduction of computer-based technologies, including the Internet, that have changed the manner in which consumers, businesses and governments at all levels operate. Indeed, there is scarcely any aspect of modern life that has not been fundamentally affected by the introduction of information and communications technology, even if these effects are not readily discernible and an entire information infrastructure has been developed that drives an increasingly globalized economy (Harrison, Wheeler & Whitehead, 2003). n support of this assertion, Harrison and his colleagues cite the following examples of the ubiquity of ICT in the 21st century:

1. Digital terrestrial television, digital cable and satellite television offering broadband interactive services in the home;

2. Information and communications technologies are being taught alongside traditional subjects in schools;

3. The increasing use of mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs);

4. The use of personal computers at home for education and entertainment purposes; and,

5. The increasing use of e-mail and the use of the internet and mobile communications for business transactions (e-commerce and m-commerce)" (p. 82).

What makes these trends remarkable is the rapidity with which they have been adopted and embraced by consumers, businesses and governments alike. In this regard, recent trends in the evolution of ICT are illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. ICT evolution 1990-2010

Source: Harrison et al., 2003, p. 82

As can be seen from Figure 1 above, the evolution of ICT to its current state has only required three decades or so, and the pace of innovations continues to increase as computer processing speeds improve and the infrastructure needed to support ICT initiatives continues to expand. The net effect of these trends on the environment is mixed. According to Kohler and Erdmann (2004), the expanded use of ICT applications will ultimately result in both benefits to the environment, as well as some new problems associated with their use. The extent to which the negative effects are mitigated will ultimately depend on the foresight that is used today to develop long-term energy and waste management policies that will control the development of ICT infrastructures and how they are used in the future (Kohler & Erdmann, 2004).

According to Lan and Thomas (2009), there is no escaping the fact that information and communication technologies are fundamentally changing the nature of commerce and hold important promise for economic development in the future. These authors are quick at add, though, that proceeding with these technologies is a complex enterprise and there are still a number of unknowns involved concerning how ICT will ultimately have an effect on the environment and what can be done now to avoid potentially disastrous outcomes in the future (Lan & Thomas, 2009). According to Lan and Thomas (2009), though, there remains a dearth of timely and relevant studies in this area that can help inform policymakers concerning what steps are needed and in what order they should be implemented. In this regard, Frey, Harrison and Billett (2006) report that some useful methods that have been developed specifically for this purpose include ecological footprint analyses, which have been in use for 2 decades already and have been shown to provide a fairly accurate assessment of the environmental impact of various ICT initiatives. For instance, environmental footprint analysis assess "the bioproductive areas required to produce resources such as crops and timber, the directly occupied areas for infrastructure, and areas for absorbing waste flows (mostly limited to carbon dioxide) in a given year for a defined population" (Frey et al., 2006, p. 199).

There is also the matter of e-waste disposal, discussed further below, which have required some means for assessment as to their environmental impact. In this regard, much of the research on mobile telephones to date has been limited to the problems involved in their disposal as e-waste rather than the broader sustainability issues that are involved in their proliferation (Frey et al., 2006). Despite the introduction of the ecological footprint analytical methodology, there remains a paucity of other effective tools and approaches that can accurately make these types of assessments, due in part to the relative newness of many of the deployed technologies.

Consequently, there is a need to further explore the relationship between ICT and the environment in ways that can provide researchers with the information they need today to take the steps necessary to prevent the explosion in ICT use from introducing yet additional environmental degradations in the future (Frey et al., 2006). To this end, Lan and Thomas suggest that an expert system could be developed to help analysts project the environmental consequences of various ICT initiatives before they are launched in order to integrate measures to minimize the environmental impact. According to Lan and Thomas, "An expert decision support system, built around neural networks with a user-friendly interface and able to post-process data to information [should be] developed. The system could be used, for example, by an individual company to analyze how its ICT adoptions influence its environmental performance" (2009, p. 361).

Beyond the foregoing, Hosman, Fife and Armey (2008) call for greater collaboration and communication between researchers, the government and the business community concerning their current and future ICT needs for many of the same planning purposes as described above.

In this dynamic environment, identifying the most effective uses for ICT to promote environmentally sustainable initiatives demands an ongoing approach because innovations in technology continue to redefine the field. Perhaps not surprisingly, a majority of the recent research concerning the effect of ICT and environment sustainable initiatives has focused on the applications of these technologies for environmental monitoring and within environmental projects (Daly, 2005). The research to date indicates that ICT can be used to improve environmental sustainability by facilitating:

1. Reduction in the costs of transactions carried out over distances;

2. The ability to obtain and manage (environmental) data on scales and in situations previously impossible;

3. The ability to conduct quantitative analysis (of environmentally relevant information) in real time at unprecedented depth;

4. The ability to communicate between public, civil society, government and the private sector with unprecedented coverage and efficiency, and,

5. The ability to control processes electronically, enabling great precision to be achieved in real-time control of complex systems (Daly, 2005, p. 2).

In addition, Daly (2005) provides a number of other ways in which ICT can be valuable in promoting environmental sustainability, including:

1. ICT makes it possible for the first time in history to detect environmental problems at very large and very small scales;

2. ICT permits unprecedented monitoring of environmental quality, and unprecedented accuracy in detection of the sources and projection of the development of environmental problems;

3. ICT can be used to empower people with unprecedented understanding of environmental systems, and of the interplay between environment and development.

4. ICT can be used to allow unprecedented intensity of communication on such issues among all sectors of society; and,

5. Almost any intervention that can be identified to improve sustainability or reclaim degraded environmental systems can benefit from appropriate applications of ICT (Daly, 2005, p. 3).

Despite these positive outcomes, Daly (2005) is also quick to caution that the prevailing perspectives concerning ICT applications for environmental monitoring applications may overlook the long-term impact of these ICT applications. In this regard, Daly believes that a more appropriate approach to promote environmentally sustainable programs is to ensure that ICT is carefully and thoughtfully integrated with agriculture and land use planning efforts, that is used to help streamline industrial processes while simultaneously reducing toxic emissions, and to help develop more effective and intensive agricultural and forestry programs to help feed a rapidly growing global population and provide the wood products that will be needed in the future (Daly, 2005). To this end, Daly believes that "it may be more crucial to understand the effects of the ICT revolution on trends of urban growth, and to incorporate such considerations in national planning, than to focus on ICT in planning for the sustainability of 'environmental projects'" (p. 3). These broad-based contributions of ICT to environmental sustainability represent useful points of departure for future research.

The foregoing observations are consistent with analysts at the Brookings Institute who report, "ICT improves farmers' market information, raising agricultural production" (p. 176). Moreover, ICT can help develop environmentally sustainable initiative in the prevention of desertification by providing improvements in land husbandry practices by using better controls to prevent soil erosion improve soil fertility; in addition, ICT can help water management practices to help provide for human and agricultural needs (Ending Africa's poverty trap, 2004). As noted above, though, ICT is not a "magic bullet" ready to solve all of mankind's problems, but rather requires a thoughtful and methodical approach to achieve positive outcomes; as also noted above, there are some downside to the proliferation of the hardware used to support ICT initiatives, ironically enough, even for those being used for environmentally sustainable programs, and these issues are discussed further below.

Summary

The research showed that information and communications technology has affected virtually every aspect of living in the 21st century and continuing innovations indicate that these trends will continue as the march towards ubiquitous computing continues. The research also showed that ICT can provide a wide range of valuable outcomes for environmentally sustainable programs, including the ability to discern large and small environmental problems, highly effective monitoring of environmental quality, and improved accuracy in the detection of the sources of environmental problems in ways that have not been possible in the past. The research also showed that ICT can help reduce the ecological footprint of companies by facilitating transactions and reducing transportation costs, as well as the enormous power these technologies have for providing superior communications. Beyond the foregoing, the research also showed that ICT can promote environmental sustainability by identifying both small- and large-scale environmental problems, improving the collaboration between the public and private sector and helping farmers in emerging nations develop improved water-management and agricultural practices. In fact, the research was consistent in showing that just about any environmentally sustainable initiative could benefit from the use of ICT applications.

To achieve these desirable outcomes, though, means that individuals, companies and governments at all levels must take the steps today to ensure that not only are these environmentally sustainable initiatives thoughtfully and carefully implemented and administered, but that the manner in which ICT devices are disposed is appropriate, with recycling being among the best approaches to avoid having these ICT devices become part of the waste stream. Even with recycling, though, the research showed that there a numerous problems, most especially with the practice of repackaging these materials for export to developing nations where the methods used to extract the valuable metals place workers -- and the environment -- and risk. Although these impacts are offset in part by the foregoing positive contributions of ICT, additional studies are needed to identify better ways of keeping ICT working for the environment instead of contributing to its degradation through e-waste.

Conclusion

Humankind currently stands at a critical juncture in its history. The steps taken today can "make or break" the future of the world, thereby making environmentally sustainable initiatives an absolute top priority. Indeed, ICT holds the promise of providing the sustainable environmental programs that are desperately needed and for contributing to more intensified agricultural and forestation efforts that are also required to feed and clothe a rapidly expanding global population. During an era when fully two-thirds of the world's population does not even have access to clean water and people all over the world are hungry, it just makes good sense to use the tools that are available to address these needs, and the research clearly showed that ICT represents just such a tool. In the final analysis, the application of ICT to environmentally sustainable initiatives stands to save humankind from itself, providing that steps are taken today to reduce the impact the e-waste will have on the environment in the future. Rather than being buried by the enormous amounts of e-waste that are generated on a daily basis, perhaps one of the best places to start environmentally sustainable practices with ICT is to identify superior approaches to recycling these materials and to ban the export of these e-waste materials to developing nations that do not subscribe to safe recycling practices. A public-private partnership between government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private enterprises could help achieve this goal in ways that simply hoping for the best and ignoring the problem because American workers are not involved will not.